The Programme

I)                    The age of exploration:

1)        The prelude to the Age of exploration

a)                   The Middle Ages (5^th– 15^th C)

b)                  Renaissance 15^th C >>> The Age of Exploration (Gle)>>> Africa, Asia.

2)        The exploration of the New World (1492)

3)         Territorial claims and the Tordesillas treaty (1494).

4)         The European race for territorial acquisition (Spain, Portugal, France, England…)

II)                  Settlement:

1)        First forms of settlement and the emergence of conflicts over the issue of territorial acquisition in the N.W.

2)        Causes of the English lateness in the process of settlement (under Henry VIII) [Personal, Religious, political…]

3)        First English interests in the process of settlement under Elizabeth I (1558- 1603).

Ø  Factors of the English strength during the Elizabethan age.

Ø  First important experiences >>>  mission of Sir Francis Drake: the destruction of the Invincible Armada.

III)                Colonial America:

1)        First colonial failures:

Ø  First English colonial attempts: e.g. Sir Humphrey Gilbert & Sir Walter Raleigh.

2)         The motivations of the royal interests in the colonisation of the N.W. (Eco, Pol, Mil…)

3)         The creation of colonial agencies and the encouragement of investment in the New World.

Ø  The Corporate type of col. Ag.

Ø  The Proprietary type of col. Ag.

4)        The first successful colonial attempts:

Ø  The creation of two chartered colonizing companies in 1606 (James I) (the Virginia company of London and Plymouth. >>> the emergence of the English Colonies: (4 regions: a. Chesapeak, b. New England, c. Middle Colonies, d. Southern Colonies).

IV)               The Immigration to the American Colonies:

1)        The reasons behind voluntary and involuntary Immigration from Europe to the N.W (mil, eco, social, religious….)

2)        The development and organisation of the American colonies in the NW.

3)         The Unification of the British Colonies and the emergence of the Spirit of Self-reliance. (political consciousness, economic self-reliance, cultural. ID) >> The Great Awakening>>Common defence

4)        The nature of the British authority with the American colonies.

5)        The French and Indian War>>> the treaty of Paris (1763).

V)                 The American Revolution: causes and process:

1)        The first continental congress 1774

2)        The incidents of Lexington and Concord

3)        The second continental congress 1775

4)        The Proclamation of Rebellion 1775

5)        Propaganda campaign (Thomas Paine)

6)        The Motion of Richard Henry Lee

7)        The Declaration of Independence (4/07/1776)

8)        From national to international conflict (Europeans involvement).

9)        Independence: 03/09/1783

VI)               The Preparation for Civilian life:

1)        The Articles of Confederation>>> adoption>>>defects>>> examples of their weakness.

2)        Reaction to the weaknesses of the articles.

3)        The Great Compromise.

4)        The birth of the American Constitution.

END OF THE PROGRAMME

The framing and adoption of the US Constitution

THE CONFEDERATION
The Congress of the Confederation had little government authority. “It could ask for money but not compel payment,” as one historian wrote; “it could enter into treaties but not enforce their stipulations; it could provide for raising of armies but not fill the ranks; it could borrow money but take no proper measures for repayment; it could advise and recommend but not command.”Congress was virtually helpless to cope with foreign relations and a postwar economic depression that would have challenged the resources of a much stronger government. It was not easy to find men of stature to serve in such a body, and it was often hard to gather a quorum of those who did. Yet in spite of its handicaps, the Confederation Congress somehow managed to survive and to lay important foundations. It concluded the Treaty of Paris in 1783. It created the first executive departments. And it formulated principles of land distribution and territorial government that guided westward expansion all the way to the Pacific coast.
Throughout most of the War of Independence, Congress distrusted and limited executive power. It assigned administrative duties to its committees and thereby imposed a painful burden on conscientious members. John Adams, for instance, served on some eighty committees at one time or another. In 1781, however, Congress began to set up three departments: Foreign Affairs, Finance, and War, each with a single head responsible to Congress.
FINANCE
The closest thing to an executive head of the Confederation was Robert Morris, who as superintendent of finance in the final years of the war became the most influential figure in the government.Morris wanted to make both himself and the Confederation government more powerful. He envisioned a coherent program of taxation and debt management to make the government financially stable; “a public debt supported by public revenue will prove the strongest cement to keep our confederacy together,” he confided to a friend. It would wed to the support of the federal government the powerful influence of the public creditors who had provided wartime supplies. Morris therefore welcomed the chance to enlarge the debt by issuing  new government bonds that would help pay off wartime debts. Because of the government’s precarious finances, these bonds brought only 10¢ to 15¢ on the dollar, but with a sounder Treasury—certainly one with the power to raise taxes—the bonds could be expected to rise in value, creating new capital with which to finance banks and economic development.
In 1781, as part of his plan,Morris secured a congressional charter for the Bank of North America, which would hold government cash, lend money to the government, and issue currency. Though a national bank, it was in part privately owned and was expected to turn a profit for Morris and other shareholders, in addition to performing a crucial public service. But Morris’s program depended ultimately upon a secure income for the government, and it foundered on the requirement of unanimous state approval for amendments to the Articles of Confederation. Local interests and the fear of a central authority—a fear strengthened by the recent quarrels with king and Parliament—hobbled action.
To carry their point, Morris and his nationalist friends in 1783 risked a dangerous gamble. George Washington’s army, encamped at Newburgh, New York, on the Hudson River, had grown restless in the final winter of the war. The soldiers’ pay was late as usual, and experience had given them reason to fear that promised land bounties and life pensions for officers might never be honored once their service was no longer needed. A delegation of concerned officers traveled to Philadelphia with a petition for redress. Soon they found themselves drawn into a scheme to line up the army and public creditors with nationalists in Congress and confront the states with the threat of a coup d’état unless they yielded more power to Congress. Alexander Hamilton, congressman from New York and former aide-de-camp to General Washington, sought to bring his old commander into the plan.
Washington sympathized with the general purpose of Hamilton’s scheme. If congressional powers were not enlarged, he had told a friend, “the band which at present holds us together, by a very feeble thread, will soon be broken, when anarchy and confusion must ensue.” But Washington was just as deeply convinced that a military coup would be both dishonorable and dangerous. In March 1783, when he learned that some of the plotters had planned an unauthorized meeting of officers, he confronted the conspirators.  He told them that any effort by officers to intimidate the government by threatening a mutinous coup violated the very purposes for which the war was being fought and directly challenged his own integrity. While agreeing that the officers had been poorly treated by the government and deserved their long-overdue back pay and future pensions, he expressed his “horror and detestation” of any effort by the military to assume dictatorial powers. A military revolt would open “the flood-gates of civil discord” and “deluge our rising empire in blood.” Before closing his remarks,Washington paused dramatically as he produced a pair of eyeglasses. “Gentlemen,” he apologized, “you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but blind in the service of my country.”He then read a letter from a congressman that explained the nation’s financial plight. It was a virtuoso performance.
When he had finished, his officers, many of them fighting back tears, unanimously adopted resolutions denouncing the recent “infamous propositions,” and the so-called Newburgh Conspiracy came to a sudden end. The Confederation never did put its finances in order. The Continental currency had long since become a byword for worthlessness. It was never redeemed. The debt, domestic and foreign, grew from $11 million to $28 million as Congress paid off citizens’ and soldiers’ claims. Each year, Congress ran a deficit in its operating expenses.
LAND POLICY
Congress might ultimately have hoped to draw an independent income from the sale of western lands. Thinly populated by Indians, French settlers, and a growing number of American squatters, the region north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachian Mountains had long been the site of overlapping claims by colonies and speculators. Under the Articles of Confederation, land not included within the boundaries of the thirteen original states became public domain, owned and administered by the national government.
As early as 1779, Congress had declared that it would not treat the western lands as colonies. The delegates resolved instead that western lands “shall be . . . formed into distinct Republican states,” equal in all respects to other states. Between 1784 and 1787 policies for the development of the West emerged in three major ordinances of the Confederation Congress. These documents, which rank among its greatest achievements—and among the most important in American history—set precedents that the United States would follow in its expansion all the way to the Pacific. Thomas Jefferson in fact was prepared to grant self-government to western states at an early stage, allowing settlers to meet and choose their own officials. Under the land ordinance that Jefferson wrote in 1784, when the population equalled that of the smallest existing state, the territory would achieve full statehood.
In the Land Ordinance of 1785, the delegates outlined a plan of land surveys and sales that would eventually stamp a rectangular pattern on much of the nation’s surface, a rectilinear grid pattern that is visible from the air in many parts of the country today because of the layout of roads and fields. Wherever Indian titles had been extinguished, the Northwest was to be surveyed and six-mile-square townships established along east-west and northsouth lines. Each township was in turn divided into thirty-six lots (or sections) one mile square (or 640 acres). The 640-acre sections were to be sold at auction for no less than $1 per acre, or $640 total. Such terms favored land speculators,
of course, since few common folk had that much money or were able to work that much land. In later years new land laws would make smaller plots available at lower prices, but in 1785 Congress was faced with an empty Treasury, and delegates believed this system would raise the needed funds most effectively. In each township, however, Congress did reserve the income from the sixteenth section for the support of schools—a significant departure at a time when public schools were rare.
THE NORTHWEST ORDINANCE Spurred by the plans for land sales and settlement, Congress drafted a more specific frame of territorial government to replace Jefferson’s ordinance of 1784. The new plan backed off from Jefferson’s recommendation of early self-government. Because of the trouble that might be expected from squatters who were clamoring for free land, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 required a period of colonial tutelage. At first the territory fell subject to a governor, a secretary, and three judges, all chosen by Congress. Eventually there would be three to five territories in the region, and when any one had a population of 5,000 free male adults, it could choose an assembly. Congress then would name a council of five from ten names proposed by the assembly. The governor would have a veto over actions by the territorial assembly, and so would Congress. The resemblance to the old royal colonies is clear, but there were two significant differences. For one, the ordinance anticipated statehood when any territory’s population reached a population of 60,000 “free inhabitants.” At that point a convention could be called to draft a state constitution and apply to Congress for statehood. For another, it included a bill of rights that guaranteed religious freedom, legislative representation in proportion to the population, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and the application of common law. Finally, the ordinance excluded slavery permanently from the Northwest—a proviso Jefferson had failed to get accepted in his ordinance of 1784. This proved a fateful decision. As the progress of emancipation in the existing states gradually freed all slaves above the Mason-Dixon line, the Ohio River boundary of the Old Northwest extended the line between freedom and slavery all the way to the Mississippi River, encompassing what would become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Northwest Ordinance had a larger importance, beyond establishing a formal procedure for transforming territories into states. It represented a sharp break with the imperialistic assumption behind European expansion into the Western Hemisphere. The new states were to be admitted to the American republic as equals.
In seven mountain ranges to the west of the Ohio River, an area in which recent treaties had voided Indian titles, surveying began in the mid-1780s. But before any land sales occurred, a group of speculators from New England presented cash-poor Congress with a seductive offer. Organized in Boston, the group of former army officers took the name of the Ohio Company of Associates and sent the Reverend Manasseh Cutler to present its plan.Cutler, a former chaplain in the Continental army and a co-author of the Northwest Ordinance, proved a persuasive lobbyist, and in 1787 Congress voted a grant of 1.5 million
acres for about $1 million in certificates of indebtedness to Revolutionary War veterans. The arrangement had the dual merit, Cutler argued, of reducing the debt and encouraging new settlement and sales of federal land.
The lands south of the Ohio River followed a different line of development. Title to the western lands remained with Georgia,North Carolina, and Virginia for the time being, but settlement proceeded at a far more rapid pace during and after the Revolution, despite the Indians’ fierce resentment of encroachments upon their hunting grounds. Substantial centers of population grew up around Harrodsburg and Boonesborough in Kentucky and along the Watauga, Holston, and Cumberland Rivers as far west as Nashborough (Nashville). In the Old Southwest active movements for statehood arose early. North Carolina tentatively ceded its western claims in 1784, whereupon the Holston settlers formed the short-lived state of Franklin, which became little more than a bone of contention among rival speculators until North Carolina reasserted control in 1789, shortly before the cession of its western lands became final. Indian land claims, too, were being extinguished. The Iroquois and Cherokees, badly battered during the Revolution, were in no position to resist encroachments by American settlers. By the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), the Iroquois were forced to cede land in western New York and Pennsylvania. With the Treaty of Hopewell (1785), the Cherokees gave up all claims in South Carolina, much of western North Carolina, and large portions of present-day Kentucky and Tennessee. Also in 1785 the major Ohio tribes dropped their claim to most of Ohio, except for a chunk bordering the western part of Lake Erie. The Creeks, pressed by the state of Georgia to cede portions of their lands in 1784–1785, went to war in the summer of 1786 with covert aid from Spanish Florida. When Spanish aid diminished, however, the Creek chief traveled to New York and in 1791 finally struck a bargain that gave the Creeks favorable trade arrangements with the United States but did not restore the lost land.
TRADE AND THE ECONOMY
In its economic life, as in planning westward expansion, the young nation dealt vigorously with difficult problems. Congress had little to do with achievements in the economy, but neither could it bear the blame for an acute economic contraction that occurred between 1770 and 1790, the result primarily of the war and separation from the British Empire. Although farmers enmeshed in local markets maintained their livelihood during the Revolutionary era, commercial agriculture dependent upon trade with foreign markets suffered a severe downturn. The Tidewater region saw many enslaved people carried off by the
British. Chesapeake planters also lost their lucrative foreign markets. Tobacco was especially hard hit. The British decision to close its West Indian colonies to American trade devastated what had been a thriving commerce in timber, wheat, and other foodstuffs.
Merchants suffered even more wrenching adjustments than the farmers. Cut out of the British mercantile system, they had to find new outlets. Circumstances that impoverished some enriched those who financed privateers, supplied the armies on both sides, and hoarded precious goods while demand and prices soared. By the end of the war, a strong sentiment for free trade had developed in both Britain and America. In the memorable year 1776 the Scottish economist Adam Smith published Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a classic manifesto against mercantilism. Some British statesmen embraced the new gospel of free trade, but the public and Parliament would cling to the conventions of mercantilism for many years to come.
After the war British trade with America did resume, and American ships were allowed to deliver merican products and return to the United States with British goods. American ships could not carry British goods anywhere else, however. The pent-up demand for familiar goods created a vigorous market in postwar exports to America, fueled by British credit and the hard money that had come into America with foreign aid, the expenditures of foreign armies, and wartime trade and privateering. The result was a quick cycle of postwar boom and bust, a buying spree followed by a money shortage and economic troubles that lasted several years. In colonial days the chronic trade deficit with Britain had been offset by the influx of coins from trade with the West Indies. Now American ships found themselves excluded altogether from the British West Indies. The islands, however, still demanded wheat, fish, lumber, and other products from the mainland, and American shippers had not lost their talent for smuggling. Already American shippers had begun exploring new outlets, and by 1787 their seaports were flourishing more than ever. Freed from colonial restraints, American merchants now had the run of the seas. Trade treaties opened new markets with the Dutch (1782), the Swedes (1783), the Prussians (1785), and the Moroccans (1787), and American shippers found new outlets on their own in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The most spectacular new development, if not the largest, was trade with China. It began in 1784–1785, when the Empress of China sailed from New York to Canton (present-day Guangzhou) and back, around the tip of South America. Profits from its cargo of silks and tea encouraged the outfitting of other ships, which carried ginseng root and other American goods to exchange for the luxury goods of east Asia.
By 1790 the dollar value of American commerce and exports had far outrun the trade of the colonies. Merchants had more ships than they had had before the war. Farm exports were twice what they had been. Although most of the exports were the products of forests, fields, and fisheries, during and after the war more Americans had turned to small-scale manufacturing, mainly for domestic markets.
DIPLOMACY
The shortcomings and failures of the Articles of Confederation prompted a growing chorus of complaints. In diplomacy there remained the nagging problems of relations with Great Britain and Spain, both of which still kept military posts on American soil and conspired with Indians and white settlers in the West. The British, despite the peace treaty of 1783, held on to a string of forts along the Canadian border. From these they kept a hand in the lucrative fur trade and a degree of influence with the Indian tribes, whom they were suspected of stirring up to make sporadic attacks on American settlements along the frontier. They gave as a reason for their continued occupation the failure of Americans to pay their prewar debts to British creditors.According to one Virginian, a common question in his state was “If we are now to pay the debts due to British merchants, what have we been fighting for all this while?”
Another major irritant to U.S.-British relations was the American confiscation of Loyalist property. The Treaty of Paris had encouraged Congress to stop confiscations of Tory property, to guarantee immunity to Loyalists for twelve months, during which they could return and wind up their affairs, and to recommend that the states give back confiscated property. Persecutions, even lynchings, of Loyalists occurred even after the end of the war. Some Loyalists who had fled to Canada or Britain returned unmolested, however, and resumed their lives in their former homes. By the end of 1787, moreover, at the request of Congress, all the states had rescinded the laws that were in conflict with the peace treaty.
With Spain the chief issues were the southern boundary of the United States and the right to navigate the Mississippi River. According to the preliminary treaty with Britain, the United States claimed a line as far south as the 31st parallel; Spain held out for the line running eastward from the mouth of the Yazoo River (at 32_28_N), which it claimed as the traditional boundary. The Treaty of Paris had also given the Americans the right to navigate the Mississippi River to its mouth. Still, the international boundary ran down the middle of the river for most of its length, and the Mississippi was entirely within Spanish Louisiana in its lower reaches. The right to navigation was crucial to the growing American settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee, but in 1784 Louisiana’s Spanish governor closed the river to American commerce and began to intrigue with Indians against the American settlers and with settlers against the United States.
THE CONFEDERATION’S PROBLEMS
The problems of trans- Appalachian settlers with the British and the Spanish seemed remote from the everyday concerns of most Americans, however. What touched most Americans more were economic troubles and the acute currency shortage after the war. Merchants who found themselves excluded from old channels of imperial trade began to agitate for reprisals. State governments, in response, laid special tonnage duties on British vessels and special tariffs on the goods they brought to the United States. State action alone, however, failed to work because of a lack of uniformity among the states. British ships could be diverted to states whose duties were less restrictive. The other states tried to meet this problem by taxing British goods that flowed across state lines, creating the impression that states were involved in commercial war with each other. Although these duties seldom affected American goods, there was a clear need—it seemed to commercial interests—for a central power to regulate trade.
Mechanics (skilled workers who made, used, or repaired tools and machines) and artisans (skilled workers who made products) were developing an infant industry. Their products ranged from crude iron nails to the fine silver bowls of such smiths as Paul Revere. These skilled workers wanted reprisals against British goods as well as British ships. They sought, and to various degrees obtained from the states, tariffs (taxes) on foreign goods that competed with theirs. The country would be on its way to economic independence, they argued, if only the money that flowed into the country were invested in domestic manufactures instead of being paid out for foreign goods. Nearly all the states gave some preference to American goods, but again the lack of uniformity in their laws put them at crosspurposes, and so urban mechanics along with merchants were drawn into the movement calling for a stronger central government in the interest of uniform regulation.
The shortage of cash and other economic difficulties gave rise to more immediate demands for paper currency as legal tender, for postponement of tax and debt payments, and for laws to “stay” the foreclosure of mortgages. Farmers who had profited during the war found themselves squeezed afterward by depressed crop prices and mounting debts while merchants opened up new trade routes. Creditors demanded hard money, but it was in short supply—and paper money was almost nonexistent after the depreciation of the Continental currency. The result was an outcry for relief, and around 1785 the demand for new paper money became the most divisive issue in state politics. Debtors demanded the addition of paper money as a means of easing repayment, and farmers saw paper money as an inflationary way to raise commodity prices.
In 1785–1786 seven states (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Georgia, and North Carolina) began issuing paper money. It served in five of those states—Pennsylvania,New York,New Jersey, South Carolina, and Rhode Island—as a means of extending credit to hardpressed farmers through state loans on farm mortgages. It was variously used to fund state debts and to pay off the claims of veterans. In spite of the cries of calamity at the time, the money never seriously depreciated in Pennsylvania, New York, and South Carolina. In Rhode Island, however, the debtor party ran wild. In 1786 the Rhode Island legislature issued more paper money than any other state in proportion to its population and declared it legal tender in payment of all debts. Creditors fled the state to avoid being paid in worthless paper.
SHAYS’S REBELLION
Newspapers throughout the country followed the chaotic developments in Rhode Island. The little commonwealth, stubbornly independent since the days of Roger Williams, became the prime example of democracy run riot—until its riotous neighbor, Massachusetts, provided the final proof (some said) that the new country was poised on the brink of anarchy: Shays’s Rebellion. There the trouble was not too much paper money but too little, as well as too much taxation.
After 1780 Massachusetts had remained in the grip of a rigidly conservative regime, which levied ever-higher poll and land taxes to pay off a heavy war debt, held mainly by wealthy creditors in Boston. The taxes fell most heavily upon beleaguered farmers and the poor in general.When the Massachusetts legislature adjourned in 1786 without providing either paper money or any other relief from taxes and debts, three western counties erupted in revolt.
Armed bands closed the courts and prevented foreclosures. A ragtag “army” of some 1,200 disgruntled farmers led by Daniel Shays, a destitute war veteran, advanced upon the federal arsenal at Springfield in 1787. Shays and his followers sought a more flexible monetary policy, laws allowing them to use corn and wheat as money, and the right to postpone paying taxes until the depression lifted.
The state responded by sending 4,400 militiamen armed with cannon. The soldiers scattered the debtor army with a single volley that left four farmers dead. The rebel farmers nevertheless had a victory of sorts. The new state legislature included members sympathetic to the agricultural crisis. The legislature omitted direct taxes the following year, lowered court fees, and exempted clothing, household goods, and tools from the debt process. But a more important consequence was the impetus the rebellion gave to conservatism and nationalism.
Rumors, at times deliberately inflated, greatly exaggerated the extent of this pathetic rebellion of desperate men. The Shaysites were linked to the conniving British and accused of seeking to pillage the wealthy. Panic set in among the republic’s elite. “Good God!” George Washington exclaimed when he heard of the incident. Although the rebellion had been suppressed, he worried that it might tempt other disgruntled groups around the country to adopt similar measures. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams tarred the Shaysites as “ignorant, restless desperadoes, without conscience or principles, . . . mobbish insurgents [who] are for sapping the foundation” of the struggling young government. Jefferson disagreed. If Abigail Adams and others were overly critical of Shays’s Rebellion, Jefferson was, if anything, too complacent. From his post in Paris, he wrote to a friend back home, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”Abigail Adams was so infuriated by Jefferson’s position that she would not correspond with him for months.
CALLS FOR A STRONGER GOVERNMENT
Well before the outbreaks in New England, the advocates of a stronger central authority had been calling for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. Selfinterest led bankers, merchants, and mechanics to promote a stronger central government as the only alternative to anarchy. Gradually Americans were losing the fear of a strong central government as they saw evidence that tyranny might come from other quarters, including the common people themselves.
Such developments led many of the Revolutionary leaders to revise their assessment of the American character. “We have, probably,” concluded George Washington in 1786, “had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation.” Washington and others decided that at any given time only a distinct minority of citizens could be relied upon to set aside their private interests in favor of the common good. Madison and other so-called Federalists concluded that the new republic must now depend for its success upon the constant virtue of the few rather than the publicspiritedness of the many.
In 1785 commissioners from Virginia and Maryland had met at Mount Vernon, at George Washington’s invitation, to promote commerce and economic development and to settle outstanding questions about the navigation of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay.Washington had a personal interest in the river flowing by his door: it was a potential route to the West, with its upper reaches close to the upper reaches of the Ohio, where his military career had begun thirty years before and where he owned substantial property. The delegates agreed on interstate cooperation, and Maryland suggested a further pact with Pennsylvania and Delaware to encourage water transportation between the Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River; the Virginia legislature agreed and, at Madison’s suggestion, invited all thirteen states to a general discussion of commercial problems. Nine states named representatives, but those from only five appeared at the Annapolis Convention in 1786—neither the New England states nor the Carolinas and Georgia were represented. Apparent failure soon turned into success, however, when the alert Alexander Hamilton, representing New York, presented a resolution for still another convention, in Philadelphia, to consider all measures necessary “to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”
ADOPTING THE CONSTITUTION
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
After stalling for several months, Congress fell in line in 1787 with a resolution endorsing a convention “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” By then five states had already named delegates; before the meeting, called to begin on May 14, 1787, six more states had acted. New Hampshire delayed until June, and its delegates arrived in July. Fearful of consolidated power, tiny Rhode Island kept aloof throughout. (Critics labeled the fractious little state Rogue Island.) Virginia’s Patrick Henry, an implacable foe of centralized government, claimed to “smell a rat” and refused to represent his state. Twenty-nine delegates from nine states began work on May 25. Altogether, the state legislatures had elected seventy-three men. Fifty-five attended at one time or another, and after four months of deliberations in stifling summer heat, thirty-nine signed the constitution they drafted. The durability and flexibility of that document testify to the remarkable quality of the men who made it. The delegates were surprisingly young:
forty-two was the average age. They were farmers, merchants, lawyers, and bankers, many of them widely read in history, law, and political philosophy, yet they were also practical men of experience, tested in the fires of the Revolution. Twenty-one had served in the conflict, seven had been state governors, most had been members of the Continental Congress, and eight had signed the Declaration of Independence.
The magisterial George Washington served as presiding officer but participated little in the debates. Eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin, the oldest delegate, also said little from the floor but provided a wealth of experience, wit, and common sense behind the scenes. More active in the debates were James Madison, the ablest political philosopher in the group; Massachusetts’s dapper Elbridge Gerry, a Harvard graduate who earned the nickname Old Grumbletonian because, as John Adams once said, he “opposed everything he did not propose”; George Mason, the irritable author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and a slaveholding planter with a deep-rooted suspicion of all government; the eloquent, arrogant New York aristocrat Gouverneur Morris, who harbored a venomous contempt for the masses; Scottish-born James  Wilson of Pennsylvania, one of the ablest lawyers in the new nation and next in importance at the convention only to Washington and Madison; and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, a self-trained lawyer adept at negotiating compromises. John Adams, like Jefferson, was serving abroad on diplomatic missions.
Also conspicuously absent during most of the convention was Alexander Hamilton, the staunch nationalist who regretfully went home when the other two New York delegates walked out to protest what they saw as the loss of states’ rights.
Madison emerged as the central figure at the convention. Small of stature—barely over five feet tall—and frail in health, the thirty-sixyear- old bookish bachelor was descended from wealthy slaveholding Virginia planters. He suffered from chronic headaches and was painfully shy. Crowds made him nervous, and he hated to use his high-pitched voice in public, much less in open debate. But the Princeton graduate possessed a keen, agile mind and had a voracious appetite for learning, and the convincing eloquence of his arguments proved decisive. “Every person seems to acknowledge his greatness,” wrote one delegate. Another said that Madison “blends together the profound politician with the scholar . . . [and] always comes forward as the best informed man of any point in the debate.”Madison had arrived in Philadelphia with trunks full of books and a head full of ideas. He had been preparing for the convention for months and probably knew more about historic forms of government than any other delegate.
For the most part the delegates’ differences on political philosophy fell within a narrow range. On certain fundamentals they generally agreed: that government derived its just powers from the consent of the people but that society must be protected from the tyranny of the majority; that the people at large must have a voice in their government but that any one group must be kept from abusing power; that a stronger central authority was essential but that all power was subject to abuse. They assumed with Madison that even the best people were naturally selfish, and government, therefore, could not be founded altogether upon a trust in goodwill and virtue. Yet by a careful arrangement of checks and balances, by checking power with countervailing power, the Founding Fathers hoped to devise institutions that could constrain individual sinfulness and channel self-interest to benefit the public good.
THE VIRGINIA AND NEW JERSEY PLANS
At the outset the delegates unanimously elected George Washington president of the convention. One of the first decisions was to meet behind closed doors in order to discourage outside pressures and theatrical speeches to the galleries. The secrecy of the proceedings was remarkably well kept, and knowledge of the debates comes mainly from Madison’s extensive notes.
It was Madison, too, who drafted the proposals that set the framework of  the discussions. These proposals, which came to be called the Virginia Plan, embodied a revolutionary idea: that the delegates scrap their instructions to revise the Articles of Confederation and submit an entirely new document to the states. The plan proposed separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches and a truly national government to make laws binding upon individual citizens as well as states. Congress would be divided into two houses:
a lower house chosen by popular vote and an upper house of senators elected by the state legislatures. Congress could disallow state laws under the plan and would itself define the extent of its and the states’ authority. On June 15 delegates submitted the “New Jersey Plan,” which proposed to keep the existing structure of equal representation of the states in a unicameral Congress but to give Congress the power to levy taxes and regulate commerce and the authority to name a plural executive (with no veto) and a supreme court.
The plans presented the convention with two major issues: whether to amend the Articles of Confederation or draft a new document and whether to determine congressional representation by state or by population. On the first point the convention voted to work toward establishing a national government as envisioned by the Virginians. Regarding the powers of this government, there was little disagreement except in the details. Experience with the Articles had persuaded the delegates that an effective central government, as distinguished from a confederation, needed the power to levy taxes, regulate commerce, raise an army and navy, and make laws binding upon individual citizens. The lessons of the 1780s suggested to them, moreover, that in the interest of order and uniformity the states must be denied certain powers: to issue money, abrogate contracts, make treaties, wage war, and levy tariffs.
But furious disagreements arose. The first clash in the convention involved the issue of congressional representation, and it was resolved by the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Connecticut Compromise, as it was proposed by Roger Sherman), which gave both groups their way. The more populous states won apportionment by population in the House of Representatives; the states that sought to protect states’ power won equality in the Senate, with the vote by individuals, not by states.
An equally contentious struggle ensued between northern and southern delegates over slavery and the regulation of trade, an omen of sectional controversies to come. A South Carolinian stressed that his delegation and the Georgians would oppose any constitution that failed to protect slavery. Few if any of the framers of the Constitution even considered the notion of abolition, and they carefully avoided using the term slavery in the final document. In this they reflected the prevailing attitudes among white Americans. Most agreed with South Carolina’s John Rutledge when he asserted, “Religion and humanity [have] nothing to do with this [slavery] question. Interest alone is the governing principle of nations.”
The “interest” of southern delegates, with enslaved African Americans so numerous in their states, dictated that slaves be counted as part of the population in determining the number of a state’s congressional representatives. Northerners were willing to count slaves when deciding each state’s share of direct taxes but not for purposes of representation. On this issue the Congress of the Confederation had supplied a handy precedent when it sought an amendment to make population rather than land values the standard for fiscal requisitions. The proposed amendment to the Articles of Confederation would have counted three fifths of the slaves for this purpose. The delegates, with little dissent, agreed to incorporate the same three-fifths ratio into the new constitution as a basis for apportioning both representatives and direct taxes.
A more sensitive issue involved an effort to prevent the central government from stopping the transatlantic slave trade. Virginia’s George Mason, himself a slaveholder, condemned the “infernal traffic,” which his state had already outlawed. He argued that the issue concerned “not the importing states alone but the whole union.” People in the western territories were “already calling out for slaves for their new lands.”He feared that they would “fill the country” with enslaved people. Such a development would bring forth “the judgment of Heaven” on the country. Southern delegates were quick to challenge Mason’s reasoning. They argued that the continued importation of slaves was vital to their states’ economies.
To resolve the question, the delegates established a time limit: Congress could not forbid the foreign slave trade before 1808, but it could levy a tax of $10 a head on all imported slaves. In both provisions a sense of delicacy— and hypocrisy—dictated the use of euphemisms. The Constitution spoke of “free Persons” and “all other persons,” of “such persons as any of the States Now existing shall think proper to admit,” and of persons “held to Service of Labor.” The odious word slavery did not appear in the Constitution until the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished the practice.
If the delegates found the slavery issue distracting, they considered irrelevant any discussion of the legal or political role of women under the new constitution. The Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty prompted some women to demand political equality. “The men say we have no business [with politics],” Eliza Wilkinson of South Carolina observed as the Constitution was being framed,“but I won’t have it thought that because we are the weaker sex as to bodily strength we are capable of nothing more than domestic concerns.”
Her complaint, however, fell on deaf ears. There was never any formal discussion of women’s rights at the convention. The new nationalism still defined politics and government as outside the realm of female endeavor. The Constitution also said little about the processes of immigration and naturalization, and most of what it said was negative. In Article II, Section 1, it prohibits any future immigrant from becoming president, limiting that office to a “natural born Citizen.” In Article I, Sections 2 and 3, respectively, it stipulates that no person can serve in the House of Representatives who has not “been seven Years a Citizen of the United States” or in the Senate who has not “been nine Years a Citizen.” On the matter of defining citizenship, the Constitution gives Congress the authority “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” but offers no further guidance on the matter. As a result, naturalization policy has changed significantly over the years in response to fluctuating social attitudes and political moods. In 1790 the first Congress passed a naturalization law that allowed “free white persons” who had been in the country for as few as two years to be made naturalized citizens in any court. This meant that persons of African descent were denied citizenship by the federal government; it was left to individual states to determine whether free blacks were citizens. And because Indians were not “free white persons,” they were also treated as aliens rather than citizens. Not until 1924 would American Indians be granted citizenship—by an act of Congress rather than a constitutional amendment.
THE SEPARATION OF POWERS
The details of the government structure embedded in the Constitution aroused less debate than the basic issues pitting the large states against the small and the northern states against the southern. Existing state constitutions, several of which already separated powers among legislative, executive, and judicial branches, set an example that reinforced the convention’s resolve to disperse power with checks and balances. Although the Founding Fathers hated royal tyranny, most of them also feared rule by the people and favored various mechanisms to check public passions. Some delegates displayed a thumping disdain for any democratizing of the political system. Elbridge Gerry asserted that most of the nation’s problems “flow from an excess of democracy.” Alexander Hamilton once called the people “a great beast.”
Those elitist views were accommodated by the Constitution’s mixed legislative system. The lower house was designed to be closest to the voters, who elected its delegates every two years. It would be, according to Virginia’s George Mason, “the grand repository of the democratic principle of the Government.” House members should “sympathize with their constituents, should think as they think, & feel as they feel; and for these purposes should even be residents among them.” The upper house, or Senate, its members elected by the state legislatures, was intended to be more detached from the voters. Staggered six-year terms prevent the choice of a majority in any given year and thereby further isolate senators from the passing fancies of public passion.
The decision that a single person be made the chief executive caused the delegates “considerable pause,” according to James Madison. George Mason protested that this would create a “fetus of monarchy.” Indeed, several of the chief executive’s powers actually exceeded those of the British monarch. This was the sharpest departure from the recent experience in state government, where the office of governor had commonly been diluted because of the recent memory of struggles with royal governors. The president had a veto over acts of Congress, subject to being overridden by a two-thirds vote in each house, whereas the royal veto had long since fallen into complete disuse. The president was commander in chief of the armed forces and responsible for the execution of the laws. The chief executive could make treaties with the advice and consent of two thirds of the Senate and had the power to appoint diplomats, judges, and other officers with the consent of a majority of the Senate. The president was instructed to report annually on the state of the nation and was authorized to recommend legislation, a provision that presidents
eventually would take as a mandate to promote extensive programs.
But the president’s powers were limited in certain key areas. The chief executive could neither declare war nor make peace; those powers were reserved for Congress. Unlike the British monarch, moreover, the president could be removed from office. The House could impeach (indict) the chief executive—and other civil officers—on charges of treason, bribery, or “other high crimes and misdemeanors,” and upon conviction the Senate could remove an impeached president by a two-thirds vote. The presiding officer at the trial of a president would be the chief justice, since the usual presiding officer of the Senate (the vice president) would have a personal stake in the outcome.
The leading nationalists—men like James Madison, James Wilson, and Alexander Hamilton—wanted to strengthen the independence of the executive by entrusting the choice to popular election. But an elected executive was still too far beyond the American experience. Besides, a national election would have created enormous problems of organization and voter qualification. Wilson suggested instead that the people of each state choose presidential  electors equal to the number of their senators and representatives. Others proposed that the legislators make the choice. Finally, the convention voted to let the legislature decide the method in each state. Before long nearly all the states were choosing the electors by popular vote, and the electors were acting as agents of the party will, casting their votes as they had pledged them before the election. This method diverged from the original expectation that the electors would deliberate and make their own choices.
On the third branch of government, the judiciary, there was surprisingly little debate. Both the Virginia and the New Jersey Plans had called for a supreme court, which the Constitution established, providing specifically for a chief justice of the United States and leaving up to Congress the number of other justices. Although the Constitution nowhere authorizes the courts to declare laws void when they conflict with the Constitution, the power of judicial review is implied and was soon exercised in cases involving both state and federal laws. Article VI declares the federal constitution, federal laws, and treaties “to be the supreme Law of the Land,” state laws or constitutions “to the Contrary notwithstanding.” The advocates of states’ rights thought this a victory, since it eliminated the proviso in the Virginia Plan for Congress to settle all conflicts between the federal government and individual states. As it turned out, however, the clause became the basis for an important expansion of judicial review of legislative actions.
Although the Constitution extended vast new powers to the national government, the delegates’ mistrust of unchecked power is apparent in repeated examples of countervailing forces: the separation of the three branches of government, the president’s veto, the congressional power of impeachment and removal, the Senate’s power to approve or reject treaties and appointments, the courts’ implied right of judicial review. In addition, the new frame of government specifically forbade Congress to pass bills of attainder (criminal condemnation by a legislative act) or ex post facto laws (laws adopted after an event to criminalize deeds that have already been committed). It also reserved to the states large areas of sovereignty—a reservation soon made explicit by the Tenth Amendment. By dividing sovereignty between the people and the government, the framers of the Constitution provided a distinctive contribution to political theory. That is, by vesting ultimate authority in the people, they divided sovereignty within the government. This constituted a dramatic break with the colonial tradition. The British had always insisted that the sovereignty of the king-in-Parliament was indivisible.
The most glaring defect of the Articles of Confederation, the rule of state unanimity that defeated every effort to amend them, led the delegates to provide a less forbidding though still difficult method of amending the new constitution. Amendments can be proposed either by a two-thirds vote of each house or by a convention specially called, upon application of two thirds of the legislatures. Amendments can be ratified by approval of three fourths of the states acting through their legislatures or in special conventions.
The national convention has never been used, however, and state conventions have been called only once—to ratify the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, which had prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of ” alcoholic beverages.
THE FIGHT FOR RATIFICATION
The final article of the Constitution provided that it would become effective upon ratification by nine states (not quite the three-fourths majority required for amendment). After fighting off efforts to censure the convention for exceeding its authority, the Confederation Congress submitted its work to the states on September 28, 1787. In the ensuing political debate, advocates of the Constitution, who might properly have been called Nationalists because they preferred a strong central government, assumed the more reassuring name of Federalists. Opponents, who favored a more decentralized federal system, became anti-Federalists. The initiative that the Federalists took in assuming their name was characteristic of the whole campaign. They got the jump on their critics. Their leaders had been members of the convention and were already familiar with the document and the arguments on each point. They were not only better prepared but also better organized and, on the whole, made up of the more able leaders in the political community.

THE DECISION OF THE STATES
Ratification gained momentum before the end of 1787, and several of the smaller states were among the first to act, apparently satisfied that they had gained all the safeguards they could hope for in equality of representation in the Senate. Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia voted unanimously in favor. Massachusetts, still sharply divided in the aftermath of Shays’s Rebellion, was the first state in which the outcome was close. There the Federalists carried the day by winning over two hesitant leaders of the popular party. They dangled before John Hancock the possibility of his becoming vice president and won the acquiescence of Samuel Adams when they agreed to recommend amendments designed to protect human rights, including one that would specifically reserve to the states all powers not granted to the new government. Massachusetts approved the Constitution by 187 to 168 on February 6, 1788. New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, allowing it to be put into effect, but the Union could hardly succeed without the approval of Virginia, the most populous state, or New York, which had the third highest population and occupied a key position geographically. Both states harbored strong opposition groups. In Virginia, Patrick Henry became the chief spokesman for backcountry farmers who feared the powers of the new government, but wavering delegates were won over by the same strategem as in Massachusetts. When it was proposed that the convention should recommend a bill of rights, Edmund Randolph, who had refused to sign the finished document, announced his conversion to the cause.

RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION
Order of Ratification    State        Date of Date of
1 Delaware                                           December 7, 1787
2 Pennsylvania                                  December12, 1787
3 New Jersey                                      December18, 1787
4 Georgia                                             January 2, 1788
5 Connecticut                                   January 9, 1788
6 Massachusetts                              February 6, 1788
7 Maryland                                       April 28, 1788
8 South Carolina                             May 23, 1788
9 New Hampshire                         June 21, 1788
10 Virginia                                      June 25, 1788
11 New York                                   July 26, 1788
12 North Carolina                        November 21, 1789
13    Rhode Island                        May 29, 1790

Upon notification that New Hampshire had become the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, the Confederation Congress began to draft plans for an orderly transfer of power. On September 13, 1788, it selected New York City as the seat of the new government and fixed the date for elections. Each state would set the date for electing the first members of Congress. On October 10, 1788, the Confederation Congress transacted its last business and passed into history.
“Our constitution is in actual operation,” the elderly Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend; “everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” George Washington was even more uncertain about the future under the new plan of government. He had told a fellow delegate as the convention adjourned, “I do not expect the Constitution to last for more than twenty years.”
The Constitution has lasted much longer, of course, and in the process it has provided a model of resilient republican government whose features have been repeatedly borrowed by other nations through the years.Yet what makes the U.S. Constitution so distinctive is not its specific provisions but its remarkable harmony with the particular “genius of the people” it governs. The Constitution has been neither a static abstraction nor a “machine that would go of itself,” as the poet James Russell Lowell would later assert. Instead, it has provided a flexible system of government that presidents, legislators, judges, and the people have adjusted to changing social, economic, and political circumstances. In this sense the Founding Fathers not only created “a more perfect Union” in 1787; they also engineered a frame of government whose resilience has enabled later generations to continue to perfect their republican experiment. But the framers of the Constitution failed in one significant respect: in skirting the issue of slavery so as to cement the  Union, they unknowingly allowed tensions over the “peculiar institution” to reach the point where there would be no political solution—only civil war.

http://www.mediafire.com/?rn2eagn77bkemie
The password to open this link is my family name. You have to know it, students 🙂

The Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
Between The States of
New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

ARTICLE I
The Stile of this Confederacy shall be “The United States of America”.

ARTICLE II
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

ARTICLE III
The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.

ARTICLE IV
The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State, to any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, on the property of the United States, or either of them.

If any person guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the United States, he shall, upon demand of the Governor or executive power of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his offense.

Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.

ARTICLE V
For the most convenient management of the general interests of the United States, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislatures of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress on the first Monday in November, in every year, with a power reserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead for the remainder of the year.

No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor more than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which he, or another for his benefit, receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind.

Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the States, and while they act as members of the committee of the States.

In determining questions in the United States in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote.

Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress, and the members of Congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests or imprisonments, during the time of their going to and from, and attendence on Congress, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace.
Click Here!

ARTICLE VI
No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.

No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.

No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assembled, with any King, Prince or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain.

No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled, for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.

No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United States in Congress assembled, and then only against the Kingdom or State and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise.

ARTICLE VII.
When land forces are raised by any State for the common defense, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made the appointment.

ARTICLE VIII.
All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.

The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled.

ARTICLE IX.
The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the sixth article — of sending and receiving ambassadors — entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners, as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoever — of establishing rules for deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States shall be divided or appropriated — of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace — appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies commited on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and determining finally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of Congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.

The United States in Congress assembled shall also be the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other causes whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following. Whenever the legislative or executive authority or lawful agent of any State in controversy with another shall present a petition to Congress stating the matter in question and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given by order of Congress to the legislative or executive authority of the other State in controversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing and determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, Congress shall name three persons out of each of the United States, and from the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names as Congress shall direct, shall in the presence of Congress be drawn out by lot, and the persons whose names shall be so drawn or any five of them, shall be commissioners or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination: and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without showing reasons, which Congress shall judge sufficient, or being present shall refuse to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of each State, and the secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing; and the judgement and sentence of the court to be appointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive; and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence, or judgement, which shall in like manner be final and decisive, the judgement or sentence and other proceedings being in either case transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress for the security of the parties concerned: provided that every commissioner, before he sits in judgement, shall take an oath to be administered by one of the judges of the supreme or superior court of the State, where the cause shall be tried, ‘well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to the best of his judgement, without favor, affection or hope of reward’: provided also, that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States.

All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under different grants of two or more States, whose jurisdictions as they may respect such lands, and the States which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either party to the Congress of the United States, be finally determined as near as may be in the same manner as is before presecribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different States.

The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States — fixing the standards of weights and measures throughout the United States — regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States, provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated — establishing or regulating post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office — appointing all officers of the land forces, in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers — appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States — making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.

The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority to appoint a committee, to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated ‘A Committee of the States’, and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States under their direction — to appoint one of their members to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses — to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting every half-year to the respective States an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted — to build and equip a navy — to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisition shall be binding, and thereupon the legislature of each State shall appoint the regimental officers, raise the men and cloath, arm and equip them in a solid-like manner, at the expense of the United States; and the officers and men so cloathed, armed and equipped shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled. But if the United States in Congress assembled shall, on consideration of circumstances judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, officered, cloathed, armed and equipped in the same manner as the quota of each State, unless the legislature of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spread out in the same, in which case they shall raise, officer, cloath, arm and equip as many of such extra number as they judeg can be safely spared. And the officers and men so cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled.

The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque or reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defense and welfare of the United States, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine States assent to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of the majority of the United States in Congress assembled.

The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as in their judgement require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on any question shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their request shall be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several States.

ARTICLE X.
The Committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United States in Congress assembled, by the consent of the nine States, shall from time to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no power be delegated to the said Committee, for the exercise of which, by the Articles of Confederation, the voice of nine States in the Congress of the United States assembled be requisite.

ARTICLE XI.
Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.

ARTICLE XII.
All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pleged.

ARTICLE XIII.
Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.

And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union. Know Ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions, which by the said Confederation are submitted to them. And that the Articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual. In Witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hands in Congress.

DONE at Philadelphia, in the State of Pennfylvania, the 9th day of July, in the Year of our Lord 1778, and in the third year of the independence of America.

The aforefaid articles of confederation were finally ratified on the firft day of March 1781; the state of Maryland having, by their Members in Congrefs, on that day acceded thereto, and completed the fame.

New Hampshire: JOSIAH BARTLETT JOHN WENTWORTH, jun.

Massachusetts Bay: JOHN HANCOCK SAMUEL ADAMS ELBRIDGE GERRY FRANCIS DANA JAMES LOVELL SAMUEL HOLTEN

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations: WILLIAM ELLERY HENRY MARCHANT JOHN COLLINS

Connecticut: ROGER SHERMAN SAMUEL HUNTINGTON OLIVER WOLCOTT TITUS HOSMER ANDREW ADAMS

New York: JAMES DUANE FRANCIS LEWIS WILLIAM DUER GOVERNEUR MORRIS

New Jersey: JOHN WITHERSPOON NATHANIEL SCUDDER

Pennsylvania: ROBERT MORRIS DANIEL ROBERDEAU JOHN BAYARD SMITH. WILLIAM CLINGAN JOSEPH REED

Delaware: THOMAS M’KEAN JOHN DICKINSON NICHOLAS VAN DYKE,

Maryland: JOHN HANSON DANIEL CARROLL

Virginia: RICHARD HENRY LEE JOHN BANISTER THOMAS ADAMS JOHN HARVIE FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE

N. Carolina: JOHN PENN CORNELIUS HARNETT JOHN WILLIAMS

S. Carolina: HENRY LAURENS WILL HENRY DRAYTON JOHN MATHEWS RICHARD HUTSON THOMAS HEYWARD jun.

Georgia: JOHN WALTON EDWARD TELFAIR EDWARD LONGWORTHY

Appearing in a book entitled The Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America, printed in London, 1783.

The Battle of Saratoga 17/10/1777

The Battle of Saratoga

The Story of the Battles of Saratoga

“…one of the Greatest battles that Ever was fought in Amarrca…”
Major Henry Dearborn

The Revolutionary War is enshrined in American memory as the beginning of a new nation born in freedom. In this memory the conflict was quick and easy, the adversaries are little more than cartoon-like tin soldiers whose brightly colored uniforms make them ideal targets for straight-shooting American frontiersmen.

In actuality, the very year of Independence was a time of many military disasters for the fledgling republic; the first year of its existence was almost its last. New York was the stage for much of the drama that unfolded.

During the summer of 1776, a powerful army under British General Sir William Howe invaded the New York City area. His professional troops defeated and outmaneuvered General George Washington’s less trained forces. An ill advised American invasion of Canada had come to an appalling end, its once confident regiments reduced to a barely disciplined mob beset by smallpox and pursuing British troops through the Lake Champlain Valley.

As 1776 ended, the cause for American Independence seemed all but lost. It was true that Washington’s successful gamble at the battles of Trenton and Princeton kept hopes alive, but the British were still holding the initiative. Royal Garrisons held New York and its immediate environs, Newport, Rhode Island and Canada. Additionally the Royal Navy allowed the British to strike at will almost anywhere along the eastern seaboard.

In hopes of crushing the American rebellion before foreign powers might intervene, the British concocted a plan to invade New York from their base in Canada in 1777. Essentially, two armies would follow waterways into the Rebel territory, unite and capture Albany, New York. Once the town was in their possession, these British forces would open communications to the City of New York, and continue the campaign as ordered. It was believed that by capturing the Hudson River’s head of navigation (Albany) and already holding its mouth (the City of New York), the British could establish their control of the entire river. Control of the Hudson could sever New England-the hot bed of the rebellion-from the rest of the colonies.

The architect of the plan, General John Burgoyne, commanded the main thrust through the Lake Champlain valley. Although the invasion had some initial success with the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the realities of untamed terrain soon slowed the British triumphant advance into an agonizing crawl. Worse for the British, a major column en route to seek supplies in Vermont was overrun, costing Burgoyne almost irreplaceable 1000 men. Hard on the heels of this disaster, Burgoyne’s contingent of Native Americans decided to leave, word came from the west that the second British column was stalled by the American controlled Fort Stanwix and that the main British army would not be operating near the city of New York. Although his plans were unraveling, Burgoyne refused to change his plans and collected enough supplies for a dash to Albany.

For the Americans, the British delays and defeats had bought them enough time to re-organize and reinforce their army. Under a new commander, General Horatio Gates, the American army established itself at a defensive position along the Hudson River called Bemis Heights. With fortifications on the flood plain and cannon on the heights, the position dominated all movement through the river valley. Burgoyne’s army was entirely dependent upon the river to haul their supplies, and the American defenses were an unavoidable and dangerous obstacle.

Learning of the Rebels’ position, Burgoyne attempted to move part of his army inland to avoid the danger posed by the American fortifications. On September 19th 1777, his columns collided with part of General Gates’ army near the abandoned farm of Loyalist John Freeman. During the long afternoon, the British were unable to maintain any initiative or momentum. Pinned in place, they suffered galling American gunfire as they strove to hold their lines. Late in the day, reinforcements of German auxiliary troops turned the tide for Burgoyne’s beleaguered forces. Although driven from the battlefield, the British had suffered heavy casualties and Gates’ army still blocked his move south to Albany.

General Burgoyne elected to hold what ground he had and fortify his encampment, hoping for assistance from the City of New York. On October 7th, with supplies running dangerously low and options running out, Burgoyne attempted another flanking move. The expedition was noticed by the Rebels who fell upon Burgoyne’s column. Through the fierce fighting the British and their allies were routed and driven back to their fortifications. At dusk, one position held by German troops, was overwhelmed by attacking Americans. Burgoyne had to withdraw to his inner works near the river and the following day tried to withdraw northward toward safety. Hampered by bad roads made worse by frigid downpours, the British retreat made only eight miles in two days to a small hamlet called Saratoga; Gates’ army followed and surrounded Burgoyne and his army. With no other option Burgoyne capitulated on 17 October 1777.

The American victory at Saratoga was a major turning point in the war for Independence, heartening the supporters of independence and convincing France to enter in the war as an ally of the fledgling United States. It would be French military assistance that would keep the rebel cause from collapse and tip the balance at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781 – winning America its ultimate victory as a free and independent nation. The war also would reach to nearly every quarter of the globe as Spain and the Netherlands would become involved. But more importantly ideals of the rebel Americans would be exported as well, inspiring people throughout the world with the hope of liberties and freedom.

United States War for Independence

United States War for Independence

also called AMERICAN REVOLUTION, OR AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775-83), insurrection by which 13 of Great Britain’s North American colonies won political independence and went on to form the United States of America.

After the successful conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British government decided to make its North American colonies pay more of the costs of governing and defending them. Over the next 12 years Britain imposed a series of new taxes and other revenue-raising measures on the colonies that aroused heated opposition. The American colonists resented the trade regulations by which Britain utilized American economic resources to its own advantage, and they likewise resented their lack of representation in the British Parliament. British intransigence to these grievances spurred a growing desire for independence on the Americans’ part. Open fighting broke out between the British and Americans in 1775, and the next year the American colonies declared their independence from Britain.

The conflict thus began as a civil war within the British Empire over colonial affairs, but, with America being joined by France in 1778, Spain in 1779, and the Netherlands in 1780, it became an international war. On land the Americans assembled both state militias and the Continental (national) Army, with approximately 20,000 men, mostly farmers, fighting at any given time. By contrast, the British army was composed of reliable and well-trained professionals, numbering about 42,000 regulars, supplemented by about 30,000 German mercenaries.
The war began when the British general Thomas Gage sent a force from Boston to destroy American rebel military stores at Concord, Mass. After fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, rebel forces began a siege of Boston that ended when the American general Henry Knox arrived with artillery captured from Fort Ticonderoga, forcing General William Howe, Gage’s replacement, to evacuate Boston on March 17, 1776. An American force under General Richard Montgomery invaded Canada in the fall of 1775, captured Montreal, and launched an unsuccessful attack on Quebec, in which Montgomery was killed. The Americans maintained a siege on the city until the arrival of British reinforcements in the spring and then retreated to Fort Ticonderoga.

The British government sent General Howe’s brother, Richard, Admiral Lord Howe, with a large fleet to join his brother in New York, authorizing them to treat with the Americans and assure them pardon should they submit. When the Americans, who declared themselves independent on July 4, 1776, refused this offer of peace, General Howe landed on Long Island and on August 27 defeated the army of General George Washington, the commander in chief of the American forces. When Washington retreated into Manhattan, Howe drew him north, defeated his army at Chatterton Hill near White Plains on October 28, and then stormed the garrison Washington had left behind on Manhattan, seizing prisoners and supplies. Lord Cornwallis, having taken Washington’s other garrison at Fort Lee, drove the American army across New Jersey to the western bank of the Delaware River and then quartered his troops for the winter at outposts in New Jersey. On Christmas night, Washington crossed the Delaware and attacked Cornwallis’ garrison at Trenton, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners. Though Cornwallis soon recaptured Trenton, Washington escaped and went on to defeat British reinforcements at Princeton. Washington’s Trenton-Princeton campaign roused the country and kept the struggle for independence alive.

In 1777 a British army under General John Burgoyne moved south from Canada with Albany in New York as its goal. Burgoyne captured Fort Ticonderoga on July 5, but as he approached Albany he was twice defeated by an American force led by Generals Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold, and on Oct. 17, 1777, at Saratoga, he was forced to surrender his army. Earlier that fall, Howe had sailed from New York to Chesapeake Bay, and once ashore he had defeated Washington’s forces at Brandywine Creek on September 11 and occupied the American capital of Philadelphia on September 25.

After a mildly successful attack at Germantown on October 4, Washington quartered his 11,000 troops for the winter at Valley Forge. Though the conditions at Valley Forge were bleak and food was scarce, a Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, was able to give the American troops valuable training in maneuvers and in the more efficient use of their weapons. Von Steuben’s aid contributed greatly to Washington’s success at Monmouth (now Freehold), N.J., on June 28, 1778. After that battle British forces in the north remained chiefly in and around the city of New York.

While the French had been secretly furnishing financial and material aid to the Americans since 1776, in 1778 they began to prepare fleets and armies and in June finally declared war on Britain. With action in the north largely a stalemate, their primary contribution was in the south, where they participated in such undertakings as the siege of British-held Savannah and the decisive siege of Yorktown. Cornwallis destroyed an army under Gates at Camden, S.C., on Aug. 16, 1780, but suffered heavy setbacks at Kings Mountain on October 7 and at Cowpens on Jan. 17, 1781. After Cornwallis won a costly victory at Guilford Court House, N.C., on March 15, 1781, he entered Virginia to join other British forces there, setting up a base at Yorktown. Washington’s army and a force under the French Count de Rochambeau placed Yorktown under siege, and Cornwallis surrendered his army of more than 7,000 men on Oct. 19, 1781.

Thereafter, land action in America died out, though war continued on the high seas. Although a Continental Navy was created in 1775, the American sea effort lapsed largely into privateering, and after 1780 the war at sea was fought chiefly among Britain and America’s European allies. American privateers swarmed around the British Isles, and by the end of the war they had captured 1,500 British merchant ships and 12,000 sailors. After 1780 Spain and the Netherlands were able to control much of the water around the British Isles, thus keeping the bulk of British naval forces tied down in Europe.

The Treaty of Paris (Sept. 3, 1783) ended the U.S. War of Independence. Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States (with western boundaries to the Mississippi River) and ceded Florida to Spain. Other provisions called for payment of U.S. private debts to British citizens, U.S. use of the Newfoundland fisheries, and fair treatment for American colonials loyal to Britain.

In explaining the outcome of the war, scholars point out that Britain seemed never to have an overall strategy for winning and often displayed a lack of understanding and cooperation among their armies. The Americans, on the other hand, were by no means inept even before von Steuben’s training at Valley Forge, and the state militias performed admirably alongside the Continental Army in crises. French supplies and funds from 1776 to 1778, and direct military and naval support after 1778, enabled the American forces to take advantage of British disorganization, to defeat entire British armies at Saratoga and Yorktown, and to secure the independence of the 13 American states.

The Declaration of Independence

In U.S. history, document that was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It explained why the Congress on July 2 “unanimously” by the votes of 12 colonies (with New York abstaining) had resolved that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.” Accordingly, the day on which final separation was officially voted was July 2, although the 4th, the day on which the Declaration of Independence was adopted, has always been celebrated in the United States as the great national holiday–the Fourth of July, or Independence Day.

.On April 19, 1775, when armed conflict began between Britain and the 13 colonies (the nucleus of the future United States), the Americans claimed that they sought only their rights within the British Empire. At that time few of the colonists consciously desired to separate from Britain. As the War of Independence proceeded during 1775-76 and Britain undertook to assert its sovereignty by means of large armed forces, making only a gesture toward conciliation, the majority of Americans increasingly came to believe that they must secure their rights outside the empire. The losses and restrictions that came from the war greatly widened the breach between the colonies and the mother country; moreover, it was necessary to assert independence in order to secure as much French aid as possible.
On April 12, 1776, the revolutionary convention of North Carolina specifically authorized its delegates in Congress to vote for independence; and on May 15 the Virginia convention instructed its deputies to offer the motion that was finally adopted on July 2. The motion was brought forward in the Congress by Richard Henry Lee on June 7. By that time the Congress had already taken long steps toward severing ties with Britain. It had denied Parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies as early as Dec. 6, 1775, and it had declared on May 10, 1776, that the authority of the king ought to be “totally suppressed,” advising all the several colonies to establish governments of their own choice.
The passage of Lee’s resolution was delayed for several reasons. Some of the delegates had not yet received authorization to vote for separation; a few were opposed to taking the final step; and several men, among them John Dickinson, believed that the formation of a central government, together with attempts to secure foreign aid, should precede it. However, a committee consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston was promptly chosen on June 11 to prepare a statement justifying the decision to assert independence, should it be taken. The document was prepared, and on July 1 nine delegations voted for separation, despite warm opposition on the part of Dickinson. On the following day, with the New York delegation abstaining only because it lacked permission to act, the Lee resolution was adopted. (The convention of New York gave its consent on July 9, and the New York delegates voted affirmatively on July 15.) On July 19 the Congress ordered the document to be engrossed as “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.” It was accordingly put on parchment, probably by Timothy Matlack of Philadelphia. Members of the Congress present on August 2 affixed their signatures to this parchment copy on that day, and others later. The last signer was Thomas McKean of Delaware, whose name was not placed on the document before 1777.

The Declaration of Independence was written largely by Jefferson, who had displayed talent as a political philosopher and polemicist in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America, published in 1774. At the request of his fellow committee members he wrote the first draft. The members of the committee made a number of merely verbal changes, and they also expanded somewhat the list of charges against the king. The Congress made more substantial changes, deleting a condemnation of the British people, a reference to “Scotch & foreign mercenaries” (there were Scots in the Congress), and a denunciation of the African slave trade (this being offensive to some Southern and New England delegates).It can be said, as John Adams did, that the declaration contained nothing really novel in its political philosophy, which was derived from John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and other English theorists. It may also be asserted that the argument offered was not without flaws in history and logic. Substantially abandoning contention on the basis of the rights of Englishmen, the declaration put forth the more fundamental doctrines of natural rights and of government under social contract. Claiming that Parliament never truly possessed sovereignty over the colonies and that the crown of right exercised it only under contract, the declaration contended that George III, with the support of a “pretended” legislature, had persistently violated the agreement between himself as governor and the Americans as the governed. A long list of accusations was offered toward proving this contention. The right and duty of revolution were then invoked.

Few will now claim that government arose among men as Locke and Jefferson said it did, and the social-contract theory has lost vogue among political scientists. It is likewise true, from a British viewpoint, that Parliament and crown could not be separated and that the history of the colonies after 1607 was not entirely consistent with the assertion that Parliament had never as of right possessed sovereignty over them. Furthermore, the specific charges brought against the king were partisan and not uniformly defensible, and the general accusation that he intended to establish an “absolute Despotism” is hardly warranted. It should be added that several of the heaviest specific complaints condemned actions of the British government taken after the beginning of hostilities.

The defects in the Declaration of Independence are not sufficient to force the conclusion that the document is unsound. On the contrary, it was in essence morally just and politically valid. If the right of revolution cannot be established on historical grounds, it nevertheless rests solidly upon ethical ones. The right of the colonists to government ultimately of their own choice is valid. Some of the phrases of the declaration have steadily exerted profound influence in the United States, especially the proclamation that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Although the meanings of these phrases, together with conclusions drawn from them, have been endlessly debated, the declaration has served to justify the extension of American political and social democracy.

The Declaration of Independence has also been a source of inspiration outside the United States. It encouraged Antonio de Nariño and Francisco de Miranda to strive toward overthrowing the Spanish empire in South America, and it was quoted with enthusiasm by the Marquis de Mirabeau during the French Revolution. It remains a great historical landmark in that it contained the first formal assertion by a whole people of their right to a government of their own choice. What Locke had contended for as an individual, the Americans proclaimed as a body politic; moreover, they made good the argument by force of arms.Since 1952 the original parchment document of the Declaration of Independence has resided in the National Archives exhibition hall in Washington, D.C.

A good reference that you can add to your documents- just click on the subtitles

EARLY AMERICA
The First Americans
Mound Builders and Pueblos
Native American Cultures
The First Europeans
Early Settlements
Jamestown
Massachusetts
New Netherland and Maryland
Colonial-Indian Relations
Second Generation of British Colonies
Settlers, Slaves and Servants
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
New Peoples
New England
The Middle Colonies
The Southern Colonies
Society, Schools and Culture
Emergence of Colonial Government
The French and Indian War
The Witches of Salem
THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE
A New Colonial System
Stamp Act
Taxation Without Representation
Townshend Acts
Samuel Adams
Boston “Tea Party”
The Coercive Acts
The Revolution Begins
Common Sense and Independence
Defeats and Victories
Franco-American Alliance
The British Move South
Victory and Independence
Loyalists During the American Revolution
THE FORMATION OF A NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
State Constitutions
Articles of Confederation
The Problem of Expansion
Constitutional Convention
Debate and Compromise
Ratification and the Bill of Rights
President George Washington
Hamilton vs. Jefferson
Citizen Genet and Foreign Policy
Adams and Jefferson
Louisiana and Britain
War of 1812
WESTWARD EXPANSION AND REGIONAL DIFFERENCES
Building Unity
Extension of Slavery
Latin America and the Monroe Doctrine
Factionalism and Political Parties
Nullification Crisis
Battle of the Bank
Whigs, Democrats and “Know-Nothings”
Stirrings of Reform
Women’s Rights
Westward
SECTIONAL CONFLICT
Two Americas
Lands of Promise
Slavery and Sectionalism
The Abolitionists
Texas and War with Mexico
The Compromise of 1850
A Divided Nation
Lincoln, Douglas and Brown
Secession and Civil War
Western Advance, Eastern Stalemate
Gettysburg to Appomattox
With Malice Toward None
Radical Reconstruction
The End of Reconstruction
GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATION
Technology and Change
Carnegie and the Era of Steel
Corporations and Cities
Railroads, Regulations and the Tariff
Revolution in Agriculture
The Divided South
The Last Frontier
The Plight of the Indians
Ambivalent Empire
The Canal and the Americas
United States and Asia
DISCONTENT AND REFORM
Agrarian Distress and the Rise of Populism
The Struggles of Labor
The Reform Impulse
Roosevelt’s Reforms
Taft and Wilson
WAR, PROSPERITY AND DEPRESSION
War and Neutral Rights
United States Enters World War I
The League of Nations
Postwar Unrest
The Booming 1920s
Tensions Over Immigration
Clash of Cultures
The Great Depression
THE NEW DEAL AND WORLD WAR
Roosevelt and the New Deal
Unemployment
Agriculture
Industry and Labor
The Second New Deal
A New Coalition
Eve of World War II
Japan, Pearl Harbor and War
The War in North Africa and Europe
The War in the Pacific
The Politics of War
War, Victory and the Bomb
POSTWAR AMERICA
Consensus and Change
Cold War Aims
Harry Truman’s Leadership
Origins of the Cold War
Containment
The Cold War in Asia and the Middle East
Eisenhower and the Cold War
The Cold War at Home
The Postwar Economy: 1945-1960
The Fair Deal
Eisenhower’s Approach
The Culture of the 1950s
Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
Desegregation
DECADES OF CHANGE
Kennedy and the New Frontier
Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society
Confrontation Over Cuba
The Space Program
The War in Vietnam
Detente
Nixon’s Accomplishments and Defeats
The Ford Interlude
The Carter Years
Post-Vietnam Foreign Policy
The Civil Rights Movement 1960-1980
The Women’s Movement
The Latino Movement
The Native American Movement
The Counter-Culture and Environmentalism
TOWARD THE 21ST CENTURY
A Society in Transition
Conservatism and the Rise of Ronald Reagan
The Economy in the 1980s
Foreign Affairs
U.S.-Soviet Relations
Space Shuttle
Iran-Contra and Black Monday
The Presidency of George Bush
Budgets and Deficits
End to the Cold War
The Gulf War
Panama and Nafta
Bill Clinton

THE COLONIAL PEOPLES

THE COLONIAL PEOPLES
The English.—In leadership and origin the thirteen colonies, except New York and Delaware, were English. During the early days of all, save these two, the main, if not the sole, current of immigration was from England. The colonists came from every walk of life. They were men, women, and children of “all sorts and conditions.” The major portion were yeomen, or small land owners, farm laborers, and artisans. With them were merchants and gentlemen who brought their stocks of goods or their fortunes to the New World. Scholars came from Oxford and Cambridge to preach the gospel or to teach. Now and then the son of an English nobleman left his baronial hall behind and cast his lot with America. The people represented every religious faith—members of the Established Church of England; Puritans who had labored to reform that church; Separatists, Baptists, and Friends, who had left it altogether; and Catholics, who clung to the religion of their fathers.
New England was almost purely English. During the years between 1629 and 1640, the period of arbitrary Stuart government, about twenty thousand Puritans emigrated to America, settling in the colonies of the far North. Although minor additions were made from time to time, the greater portion of the New England people sprang from this original stock. Virginia, too, for a long time drew nearly all her immigrants from England alone. Not until the eve of the Revolution did other nationalities, mainly the Scotch-Irish and Germans, rival the English in numbers.
The populations of later English colonies—the Carolinas, New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia—while receiving a steady stream of immigration from England, were constantly augmented by wanderers from the older settlements. New York was invaded by Puritans from New England in such numbers as to cause the Anglican clergymen there to lament that “free thinking spreads almost as fast as the Church.” North Carolina was first settled toward the northern border by immigrants from Virginia. Some of the North Carolinians, particularly the Quakers, came all the way from New England, tarrying in Virginia only long enough to learn how little they were wanted in that Anglican colony.
The Scotch-Irish.—Next to the English in numbers and influence were the Scotch-Irish, Presbyterians in belief, English in tongue. Both religious and economic reasons sent them across the sea. Their Scotch ancestors, in the days of Cromwell, had settled in the north of Ireland whence the native Irish had been driven by the conqueror’s sword. There the Scotch nourished for many years enjoying in peace their own form of religion and growing prosperous in the manufacture of fine linen and woolen cloth. Then the blow fell. Toward the end of the seventeenth century their religious worship was put under the ban and the export of their cloth was forbidden by the English Parliament. Within two decades twenty thousand Scotch-Irish left Ulster alone, for America; and all during the eighteenth century the migration continued to be heavy. Although no exact record was kept, it is reckoned that the Scotch-Irish and the Scotch who came directly from Scotland, composed one-sixth of the entire American population on the eve of the Revolution.

These newcomers in America made their homes chiefly in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Coming late upon the scene, they found much of the land immediately upon the seaboard already taken up. For this reason most of them became frontier people settling the interior and upland regions. There they cleared the land, laid out their small farms, and worked as “sturdy yeomen on the soil,” hardy, industrious, and independent in spirit, sharing neither the luxuries of the rich planters nor the easy life of the leisurely merchants. To their agriculture they added woolen and linen manufactures, which, flourishing in the supple fingers of their tireless women, made heavy inroads upon the trade of the English merchants in the colonies. Of their labors a poet has sung:
“O, willing hands to toil;Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil;Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field.”
The Germans.—Third among the colonists in order of numerical importance were the Germans. From the very beginning, they appeared in colonial records. A number of the artisans and carpenters in the first Jamestown colony were of German descent. Peter Minuit, the famous governor of New Motherland, was a German from Wesel on the Rhine, and Jacob Leisler, leader of a popular uprising against the provincial administration of New York, was a German from Frankfort-on-Main. The wholesale migration of Germans began with the founding of Pennsylvania. Penn was diligent in searching for thrifty farmers to cultivate his
lands and he made a special effort to attract peasants from the Rhine country. A great association, known as the Frankfort Company, bought more than twenty thousand acres from him and in 1684 established a center at Germantown for the distribution of German immigrants. In old New York, Rhinebeck-on-the-Hudson became a similar center for distribution. All the way from Maine to Georgia inducements were offered to the German farmers and in nearly every colony were to be found, in time, German settlements. In fact the migration became so large that German princes were frightened at the loss of so many subjects and England was alarmed by the influx of foreigners into her overseas dominions. Yet nothing could stop the movement. By the end of the colonial period, the number of Germans had risen to more than two hundred thousand. The majority of them were Protestants from the Rhine region, and South Germany. Wars, religious controversies, oppression, and poverty drove them forth to America. Though most of them were farmers, there were also among them skilled artisans who contributed to the rapid growth of industries in Pennsylvania. Their iron, glass, paper, and woolen mills, dotted here and there among the thickly settled regions, added to the wealth and independence of the province.

A GLIMPSE OF OLD GERMANTOWN
Unlike the Scotch-Irish, the Germans did not speak the language of the original colonists or mingle freely with them. They kept to themselves, built their own schools, founded their own newspapers, and published their own books. Their clannish habits often irritated their neighbors and led to occasional agitations against “foreigners.” However, no serious collisions seem to have occurred; and in the days of the Revolution, German soldiers from Pennsylvania fought in the patriot armies side by side with soldiers from the English and Scotch-Irish sections.
Other Nationalities.—Though the English, the Scotch-Irish, and the Germans made up the bulk of the colonial population, there were other racial strains as well, varying in numerical importance but contributing their share to colonial life. From France came the Huguenots fleeing from the decree of the king which inflicted terrible penalties upon Protestants.
From “Old Ireland” came thousands of native Irish, Celtic in race and Catholic in religion. Like their Scotch-Irish neighbors to the north, they revered neither the government nor the church of England imposed upon them by the sword. How many came we do not know, but shipping records of the colonial period show that boatload after boatload left the southern and eastern shores of Ireland for the New World. Undoubtedly thousands of their passengers were Irish of the native stock. This surmise is well sustained by the constant appearance of Celtic names in the records of various colonies.

The Jews, then as ever engaged in their age-long battle for religious and economic toleration, found in the American colonies, not complete liberty, but certainly more freedom than they enjoyed in England, France, Spain, or Portugal. The English law did not actually recognize their right to live in any of the dominions, but owing to the easy-going habits of the Americans they were allowed to filter into the seaboard towns. The treatment they received there varied. On one occasion the mayor and council of New York forbade them to sell by retail and on another prohibited the exercise of their religious worship. Newport, Philadelphia, and Charleston were more hospitable, and there large Jewish colonies, consisting principally of merchants and their families, flourished in spite of nominal prohibitions of the law. Though the small Swedish colony in Delaware was quickly submerged beneath the tide of English migration, the Dutch in New York continued to hold their own for more than a hundred years after the English conquest in 1664. At the end of the colonial period over onehalf of the 170,000 inhabitants of the province were descendants of the original Dutch—still distinct enough to give a decided cast to the life and manners of New York. Many of them clung as tenaciously to their mother tongue as they did to their capacious farmhouses or their Dutch ovens; but they were slowly losing their identity as the English pressed in beside them to farm and trade. The melting pot had begun its historic mission.
THE PROCESS OF COLONIZATION
Considered from one side, colonization, whatever the motives of the emigrants, was an economic matter. It involved the use of capital to pay for their passage, to sustain them on the voyage, and to start them on the way of production. Under this stern economic necessity, Puritans, Scotch-Irish, Germans, and all were alike laid.
Immigrants Who Paid Their Own Way.—Many of the immigrants to America in colonial days were capitalists themselves, in a small or a large way, and paid their own passage. What proportion of the colonists were able to finance their voyage across the sea is a matter of pure conjecture. Undoubtedly a very considerable number could do so, for we can trace the family fortunes of many early settlers. Henry Cabot Lodge is authority for the statement that “the settlers of New England were drawn from the country gentlemen, small farmers, and yeomanry of the mother country…. Many of the emigrants were men of wealth, as the old lists show, and all of them, with few exceptions, were men of property and good standing. They did not belong to the classes from which emigration is usually supplied, for they all had a stake in the country they left behind.” Though it would be interesting to know how accurate this statement is or how applicable to the other colonies, no study has as yet been made to gratify that interest. For the present it is an unsolved problem just how many of the colonists were able to bear the cost of their own transfer to the New World.
Indentured Servants.—That at least tens of thousands of immigrants were unable to pay for their passage is established beyond the shadow of a doubt by the shipping records that have come down to us. The great barrier in the way of the poor who wanted to go to America was the cost of the sea voyage. To overcome this difficulty a plan was worked out whereby shipowners and other persons of means furnished the passage money to immigrants in return for their promise, or bond, to work for a term of years to repay the sum advanced. This system was called indentured servitude.
It is probable that the number of bond servants exceeded the original twenty thousand Puritans, the yeomen, the Virginia gentlemen, and the Huguenots combined. All the way down the coast from Massachusetts to Georgia were to be found in the fields, kitchens, and workshops, men, women, and children serving out terms of bondage generally ranging from five to seven years. In the proprietary colonies the proportion of bond servants was very high.
The Baltimores, Penns, Carterets, and other promoters anxiously sought for workers of every nationality to till their fields, for land without labor was worth no more than land in the moon. Hence the gates of the proprietary colonies were flung wide open. Every inducement was offered to immigrants in the form of cheap land, and special efforts were made to increase the population by importing servants. In Pennsylvania, it was not uncommon to find a master with fifty bond servants on his estate. It has been estimated that two-thirds of all the immigrants into Pennsylvania between the opening of the eighteenth century and the outbreak of the Revolution were in bondage. In the other Middle colonies the number was doubtless not so large; but it formed a considerable part of the population.
The story of this traffic in white servants is one of the most striking things in the history of labor. Bondmen differed from the serfs of the feudal age in that they were not bound to the soil but to the master. They likewise differed from the negro slaves in that their servitude had a time limit. Still they were subject to many special disabilities. It was, for instance, a common practice to impose on them penalties far heavier than were imposed upon freemen for the same offense. A free citizen of Pennsylvania who indulged in horse racing and gambling was let off with a fine; a white servant guilty of the same unlawful conduct was whipped at the post and fined as well.
The ordinary life of the white servant was also severely restricted. A bondman could not marry without his master’s consent; nor engage in trade; nor refuse work assigned to him. For an attempt to escape or indeed for any infraction of the law, the term of service was extended. The condition of white bondmen in Virginia, according to Lodge, “was little better than that of slaves. Loose indentures and harsh laws put them at the mercy of their masters.” It would not be unfair to add that such was their lot in all other colonies. Their fate depended upon the temper of their masters.
Cruel as was the system in many ways, it gave thousands of people in the Old World a chance to reach the New—an opportunity to wrestle with fate for freedom and a home of their own. When their weary years of servitude were over, if they survived, they might obtain land of their own or settle as free mechanics in the towns. For many a bondman the gamble proved to be a losing venture because he found himself unable to rise out of the state of poverty and dependence into which his servitude carried him. For thousands, on the contrary, bondage proved to be a real avenue to freedom and prosperity. Some of the best citizens of America have the blood of indentured servants in their veins.
The Transported—Involuntary Servitude.—In their anxiety to secure settlers, the companies and proprietors having colonies in America either resorted to or connived at the practice of kidnapping men, women, and children from the streets of English cities. In 1680 it was officially estimated that “ten thousand persons were spirited away” to America. Many of the victims of the practice were young children, for the traffic in them was highly profitable. Orphans and dependents were sometimes disposed of in America by relatives unwilling to support them. In a single year, 1627, about fifteen hundred children were shipped to Virginia. In this gruesome business there lurked many tragedies, and very few romances. Parents were separated from their children and husbands from their wives. Hundreds of skilled artisans—carpenters, smiths, and weavers—utterly disappeared as if swallowed up by death. A few thus dragged off to the New World to be sold into servitude for a term of five or seven years later became prosperous and returned home with fortunes. In one case a young man who was forcibly carried over the sea lived to make his way back to England and establish his claim to a peerage.
Akin to the kidnapped, at least in economic position, were convicts deported to the colonies for life in lieu of fines and imprisonment. The Americans protested vigorously but ineffectually against this practice. Indeed, they exaggerated its evils, for many of the “criminals” were only mild offenders against unduly harsh and cruel laws. A peasant caught shooting a rabbit on a lord’s estate or a luckless servant girl who purloined a pocket handkerchief was branded as a criminal along with sturdy thieves and incorrigible rascals. Other transported offenders were “political criminals”; that is, persons who criticized or opposed the government. This class included now Irish who revolted against British rule in Ireland; now Cavaliers who championed the king against the Puritan revolutionists; Puritans, in turn, dispatched after the monarchy was restored; and Scotch and English subjects in general who joined in political uprisings against the king.
The African Slaves.—Rivaling in numbers, in the course of time, the indentured servants and whites carried to America against their will were the African negroes brought to America and sold into slavery. When this form of bondage was first introduced into Virginia in 1619, it was looked upon as a temporary necessity to be discarded with the increase of the white population. Moreover it does not appear that those planters who first bought negroes at the auction block intended to establish a system of permanent bondage. Only by a slow process did chattel slavery take firm root and become recognized as the leading source of the labor supply. In 1650, thirty years after the introduction of slavery, there were only three hundred Africans in Virginia.
The great increase in later years was due in no small measure to the inordinate zeal for profits that seized slave traders both in Old and in New England. Finding it relatively easy to secure negroes in Africa, they crowded the Southern ports with their vessels. The English Royal African Company sent to America annually between 1713 and 1743 from five to ten thousand slaves. The ship owners of New England were not far behind their English brethren in pushing this extraordinary traffic.
As the proportion of the negroes to the free white population steadily rose, and as whole sections were overrun with slaves and slave traders, the Southern colonies grew alarmed. In 1710, Virginia sought to curtail the importation by placing a duty of £5 on each slave. This effort was futile, for the royal governor promptly vetoed it. From time to time similar bills were passed, only to meet with royal disapproval. South Carolina, in 1760, absolutely prohibited importation; but the measure was killed by the British crown. As late as 1772, Virginia, not daunted by a century of rebuffs, sent to George III a petition in this vein: “The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity and under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear, will endanger the very existence of Your Majesty’s American dominions…. Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech Your Majesty to remove all those restraints on Your Majesty’s governors of this colony which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce.”
All such protests were without avail. The negro population grew by leaps and bounds, until on the eve of the Revolution it amounted to more than half a million. In five states— Maryland, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia—the slaves nearly equalled or actually exceeded the whites in number. In South Carolina they formed almost two-thirds of the population. Even in the Middle colonies of Delaware and Pennsylvania about one-fifth of the inhabitants were from Africa. To the North, the proportion of slaves steadily diminished although chattel servitude was on the same legal footing as in the South. In New York approximately one in six and in New England one in fifty were negroes, including a few freedmen.
The climate, the soil, the commerce, and the industry of the North were all unfavorable to the growth of a servile population. Still, slavery, though sectional, was a part of the national system of economy. Northern ships carried slaves to the Southern colonies and the produce of the plantations to Europe. “If the Northern states will consult their interest, they will not oppose the increase in slaves which will increase the commodities of which they will become the carriers,” said John Rutledge, of South Carolina, in the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States. “What enriches a part enriches the whole and the states are the best judges of their particular interest,” responded Oliver Ellsworth, the distinguished
spokesman of Connecticut.

CHAPTER II
COLONIAL AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY, AND COMMERCE
THE LAND AND THEWESTWARDMOVEMENT
The Significance of Land Tenure.—The way in which land may be acquired, held, divided among heirs, and bought and sold exercises a deep influence on the life and culture of a people. The feudal and aristocratic societies of Europe were founded on a system of landlordism which was characterized by two distinct features. In the first place, the land was nearly all held in great estates, each owned by a single proprietor. In the second place, every estate was kept intact under the law of primogeniture, which at the death of a lord transferred all his landed property to his eldest son. This prevented the subdivision of estates and the growth of a large body of small farmers or freeholders owning their own land. It made a form of tenantry or servitude inevitable for the mass of those who labored on the land. It also enabled the landlords to maintain themselves in power as a governing class and kept the tenants and laborers subject to their economic and political control. If land tenure was so significant in Europe, it was equally important in the development of America, where practically all the first immigrants were forced by circumstances to derive their livelihood from the soil.
Experiments in Common Tillage.—In the New World, with its broad extent of land awaiting the white man’s plow, it was impossible to introduce in its entirety and over the whole area the system of lords and tenants that existed across the sea. So it happened that almost every kind of experiment in land tenure, from communism to feudalism, was tried. In the early days of the Jamestown colony, the land, though owned by the London Company, was tilled in common by the settlers. No man had a separate plot of his own. The motto of the community was: “Labor and share alike.” All were supposed to work in the fields and receive an equal share of the produce. At Plymouth, the Pilgrims attempted a similar experiment, laying out the fields in common and distributing the joint produce of their labor with rough equality among the workers.
In both colonies the communistic experiments were failures. Angry at the lazy men in Jamestown who idled their time away and yet expected regular meals, Captain John Smith issued a manifesto: “Everyone that gathereth not every day as much as I do, the next day shall be set beyond the river and forever banished from the fort and live there or starve.” Even this terrible threat did not bring a change in production. Not until each man was given a plot of his own to till, not until each gathered the fruits of his own labor, did the colony prosper. In Plymouth, where the communal experiment lasted for five years, the results were similar to those in Virginia, and the system was given up for one of separate fields in which every person could “set corn for his own particular.” Some other New England towns, refusing to profit by the experience of their Plymouth neighbor, also made excursions into common ownership and labor, only to abandon the idea and go in for individual ownership of the land. “By degrees it was seen that even the Lord’s people could not carry the complicated communist legislation into perfect and wholesome practice.”
Feudal Elements in the Colonies—Quit Rents, Manors, and Plantations.—At the other end of the scale were the feudal elements of land tenure found in the proprietary colonies, in the seaboard regions of the South, and to some extent in New York. The proprietor was in fact a powerful feudal lord, owning land granted to him by royal charter. He could retain any part of it for his personal use or dispose of it all in large or small lots. While he generally kept for himself an estate of baronial proportions, it was impossible for him to manage directly any considerable part of the land in his dominion. Consequently he either sold it in parcels for lump sums or granted it to individuals on condition that they make to him an annual payment in money, known as “quit rent.” In Maryland, the proprietor sometimes collected as high as £9000 (equal to about $500,000 to-day) in a single year from this source. In Pennsylvania, the quit rents brought a handsome annual tribute into the exchequer of the Penn family. In the royal provinces, the king of England claimed all revenues collected in this form from the land, a sum amounting to £19,000 at the time of the Revolution. The quit rent,—”really a feudal payment from freeholders,”—was thus a material source of income for the crown as well as for the proprietors. Wherever it was laid, however, it proved to be a burden, a source of constant irritation; and it became a formidable item in the long list of grievances which led to the American Revolution.
Something still more like the feudal system of the Old World appeared in the numerous manors or the huge landed estates granted by the crown, the companies, or the proprietors. In the colony of Maryland alone there were sixty manors of three thousand acres each, owned by wealthy men and tilled by tenants holding small plots under certain restrictions of tenure. In New York also there were many manors of wide extent, most of which originated in the days of the Dutch West India Company, when extensive concessions were made to patroons to induce them to bring over settlers. The Van Rensselaer, the Van Cortlandt, and the Livingston manors were so large and populous that each was entitled to send a representative to the provincial legislature. The tenants on the New York manors were in somewhat the same position as serfs on old European estates. They were bound to pay the owner a rent in money and kind; they ground their grain at his mill; and they were subject to his judicial power because he held court and meted out justice, in some instances extending to capital punishment.
The manors of New York or Maryland were, however, of slight consequence as compared with the vast plantations of the Southern seaboard—huge estates, far wider in expanse than many a European barony and tilled by slaves more servile than any feudal tenants. It must not be forgotten that this system of land tenure became the dominant feature of a large section and gave a decided bent to the economic and political life of America.

The Small Freehold.—In the upland regions of the South, however, and throughout most of the North, the drift was against all forms of servitude and tenantry and in the direction of the freehold; that is, the small farm owned outright and tilled by the possessor and his family. This was favored by natural circumstances and the spirit of the immigrants. For one thing, the abundance of land and the scarcity of labor made it impossible for the companies, the proprietors, or the crown to develop over the whole continent a network of vast estates. In many sections, particularly in New England, the climate, the stony soil, the hills, and the narrow valleys conspired to keep the farms within a moderate compass. For another thing, the English, Scotch-Irish, and German peasants, even if they had been tenants in the Old World, did not propose to accept permanent dependency of any kind in the New. If they could not get freeholds, they would not settle at all; thus they forced proprietors and companies to bid for their enterprise by selling land in small lots. So it happened that the freehold of modest proportions became the cherished unit of American farmers. The people who tilled the farms were drawn from every quarter of western Europe; but the freehold system gave a uniform cast to their economic and social life in America.

Social Effects of Land Tenure.—Land tenure and the process of western settlement thus developed two distinct types of people engaged in the same pursuit—agriculture. They had a common tie in that they both cultivated the soil and possessed the local interest and independence which arise from that occupation. Their methods and their culture, however, differed widely.
The Southern planter, on his broad acres tilled by slaves, resembled the English landlord on his estates more than he did the colonial farmer who labored with his own hands in the fields and forests. He sold his rice and tobacco in large amounts directly to English factors, who took his entire crop in exchange for goods and cash. His fine clothes, silverware, china, and cutlery he bought in English markets. Loving the ripe old culture of the mother country, he often sent his sons to Oxford or Cambridge for their education. In short, he depended very largely for his prosperity and his enjoyment of life upon close relations with the Old World.
He did not even need market towns in which to buy native goods, for they were made on his own plantation by his own artisans who were usually gifted slaves.
The economic condition of the small farmer was totally different. His crops were not big enough to warrant direct connection with English factors or the personal maintenance of a corps of artisans. He needed local markets, and they sprang up to meet the need. Smiths, hatters, weavers, wagon-makers, and potters at neighboring towns supplied him with the rough products of their native skill. The finer goods, bought by the rich planter in England, the small farmer ordinarily could not buy. His wants were restricted to staples like tea and sugar, and between him and the European market stood the merchant. His community was therefore more self-sufficient than the seaboard line of great plantations. It was more isolated, more provincial, more independent, more American. The planter faced the Old East. The farmer faced the New West.
The Westward Movement.—Yeoman and planter nevertheless were alike in one respect. Their land hunger was never appeased. Each had the eye of an expert for new and fertile soil; and so, north and south, as soon as a foothold was secured on the Atlantic coast, the current of migration set in westward, creeping through forests, across rivers, and over mountains. Many of the later immigrants, in their search for cheap lands, were compelled to go to the border; but in a large part the path breakers to the West were native Americans of the second and third generations. Explorers, fired by curiosity and the lure of the mysterious unknown, and hunters, fur traders, and squatters, following their own sweet wills, blazed the trail, opening paths and sending back stories of the new regions they traversed. Then came the regular settlers with lawful titles to the lands they had purchased, sometimes singly and sometimes in companies.
In Massachusetts, the westward movement is recorded in the founding of Springfield in 1636 and Great Barrington in 1725. By the opening of the eighteenth century the pioneers of Connecticut had pushed north and west until their outpost towns adjoined the Hudson Valley settlements. In New York, the inland movement was directed by the Hudson River to Albany, and from that old Dutch center it radiated in every direction, particularly westward through the Mohawk Valley. New Jersey was early filled to its borders, the beginnings of the present city of New Brunswick being made in 1681 and those of Trenton in 1685. In Pennsylvania, as in New York, the waterways determined the main lines of advance. Pioneers, pushing up through the valley of the Schuylkill, spread over the fertile lands of Berks and Lancaster counties, laying out Reading in 1748. Another current of migration was directed by the Susquehanna, and, in 1726, the first farmhouse was built on the bank where Harrisburg was later founded. Along the southern tier of counties a thin line of settlements stretched westward to Pittsburgh, reaching the upper waters of the Ohio while the colony was still under the Penn family.
In the South the westward march was equally swift. The seaboard was quickly occupied by large planters and their slaves engaged in the cultivation of tobacco and rice. The Piedmont Plateau, lying back from the coast all the way from Maryland to Georgia, was fed by two streams of migration, one westward from the sea and the other southward from the other colonies—Germans from Pennsylvania and Scotch-Irish furnishing the main supply. “By 1770, tide-water Virginia was full to overflowing and the ‘back country’ of the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah was fully occupied. Even the mountain valleys … were claimed by sturdy pioneers. Before the Declaration of Independence, the oncoming tide of home-seekers had reached the crest of the Alleghanies.”

Beyond the mountains pioneers had already ventured, harbingers of an invasion that was about to break in upon Kentucky and Tennessee. As early as 1769 that mighty Nimrod, Daniel Boone, curious to hunt buffaloes, of which he had heard weird reports, passed through the Cumberland Gap and brought back news of a wonderful country awaiting the plow. A hint was sufficient. Singly, in pairs, and in groups, settlers followed the trail he had blazed. A great land corporation, the Transylvania Company, emulating the merchant adventurers of earlier times, secured a huge grant of territory and sought profits in quit rents from lands sold to farmers. By the outbreak of the Revolution there were several hundred people in the Kentucky region. Like the older colonists, they did not relish quit rents, and their opposition wrecked the Transylvania Company. They even carried their protests into the Continental Congress in 1776, for by that time they were our “embryo fourteenth colony.”
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Though the labor of the colonists was mainly spent in farming, there was a steady growth in industrial and commercial pursuits. Most of the staple industries of to-day, not omitting iron and textiles, have their beginnings in colonial times. Manufacturing and trade soon gave rise to towns which enjoyed an importance all out of proportion to their numbers. The great centers of commerce and finance on the seaboard originated in the days when the king of England was “lord of these dominions.”

Textile Manufacture as a Domestic Industry.—Colonial women, in addition to sharing every hardship of pioneering, often the heavy labor of the open field, developed in the course of time a national industry which was almost exclusively their own. Wool and flax were raised in abundance in the North and South. “Every farm house,” says Coman, the economic historian, “was a workshop where the women spun and wove the serges, kerseys, and linseywoolseys which served for the common wear.” By the close of the seventeenth century, New England manufactured cloth in sufficient quantities to export it to the Southern colonies and to the West Indies. As the industry developed, mills were erected for the more difficult process of dyeing, weaving, and fulling, but carding and spinning continued to be done in the home. The Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes of Delaware, and the Scotch-Irish of the interior “were not one whit behind their Yankee neighbors.”
The importance of this enterprise to British economic life can hardly be overestimated. For many a century the English had employed their fine woolen cloth as the chief staple in a lucrative foreign trade, and the government had come to look upon it as an object of special interest and protection. When the colonies were established, both merchants and statesmen naturally expected to maintain a monopoly of increasing value; but before long the Americans, instead of buying cloth, especially of the coarser varieties, were making it to sell. In the place of customers, here were rivals. In the place of helpless reliance upon English markets, here was the germ of economic independence. If British merchants had not discovered it in the ordinary course of trade, observant officers in the provinces would have conveyed the news to them. Even in the early years of the eighteenth century the royal governor of New York wrote of the industrious Americans to his home government: “The consequence will be that if they can clothe themselves once, not only comfortably, but handsomely too, without the help of England, they who already are not very fond of submitting to government will soon think of putting in execution designs they have long harboured in their breasts. This will not seem strange when you consider what sort of people this country is inhabited by.”
The Iron Industry.—Almost equally widespread was the art of iron working—one of the earliest and most picturesque of colonial industries. Lynn, Massachusetts, had a forge and skilled artisans within fifteen years after the founding of Boston. The smelting of iron began at New London and New Haven about 1658; in Litchfield county, Connecticut, a few years later; at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1731; and near by at Lenox some thirty years after that. New Jersey had iron works at Shrewsbury within ten years after the founding of the colony in 1665. Iron forges appeared in the valleys of the Delaware and the Susquehanna early in the following century, and iron masters then laid the foundations of fortunes in a region destined to become one of the great iron centers of the world. Virginia began iron working in the year that saw the introduction of slavery. Although the industry soon lapsed, it was renewed and flourished in the eighteenth century. Governor Spotswood was called the “Tubal Cain” of the Old Dominion because he placed the industry on a firm foundation.
Indeed it seems that every colony, except Georgia, had its iron foundry. Nails, wire, metallic ware, chains, anchors, bar and pig iron were made in large quantities; and Great Britain, by an act in 1750, encouraged the colonists to export rough iron to the British Islands.
Shipbuilding.—Of all the specialized industries in the colonies, shipbuilding was the most important. The abundance of fir for masts, oak for timbers and boards, pitch for tar and turpentine, and hemp for rope made the way of the shipbuilder easy. Early in the seventeenth century a ship was built at New Amsterdam, and by the middle of that century shipyards were scattered along the New England coast at Newburyport, Salem, New Bedford, Newport, Providence, New London, and New Haven. Yards at Albany and Poughkeepsie in New York built ships for the trade of that colony with England and the Indies. Wilmington and Philadelphia soon entered the race and outdistanced New York, though unable to equal the pace set by New England. While Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina also built ships, Southern interest was mainly confined to the lucrative business of producing ship materials: fir, cedar, hemp, and tar.
Fishing.—The greatest single economic resource of New England outside of agriculture was the fisheries. This industry, started by hardy sailors from Europe, long before the landing of the Pilgrims, flourished under the indomitable seamanship of the Puritans, who labored with the net and the harpoon in almost every quarter of the Atlantic. “Look,” exclaimed Edmund Burke, in the House of Commons, “at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s
Bay and Davis’s Straits, while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south…. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both poles. We know that, whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland nor the activity of France nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people.”
The influence of the business was widespread. A large and lucrative European trade was built upon it. The better quality of the fish caught for food was sold in the markets of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, or exchanged for salt, lemons, and raisins for the American market. The lower grades of fish were carried to the West Indies for slave consumption, and in part traded for sugar and molasses, which furnished the raw materials for the thriving rum industry of New England. These activities, in turn, stimulated shipbuilding, steadily enlarging the demand for fishing and merchant craft of every kind and thus keeping the shipwrights, calkers, rope makers, and other artisans of the seaport towns rushed with work. They also increased trade with the mother country for, out of the cash collected in the fish markets of Europe and the West Indies, the colonists paid for English manufactures. So an ever-widening circle of American enterprise centered around this single industry, the nursery of seamanship and the maritime spirit.
Oceanic Commerce and American Merchants.—All through the eighteenth century, the commerce of the American colonies spread in every direction until it rivaled in the number of people employed, the capital engaged, and the profits gleaned, the commerce of European nations. A modern historian has said: “The enterprising merchants of New England developed a network of trade routes that covered well-nigh half the world.” This commerce, destined to be of such significance in the conflict with the mother country, presented, broadly speaking, two aspects.
On the one side, it involved the export of raw materials and agricultural produce. The Southern colonies produced for shipping, tobacco, rice, tar, pitch, and pine; the Middle colonies, grain, flour, furs, lumber, and salt pork; New England, fish, flour, rum, furs, shoes, and small articles of manufacture. The variety of products was in fact astounding. A sarcastic writer, while sneering at the idea of an American union, once remarked of colonial trade: “What sort of dish will you make? New England will throw in fish and onions. The middle states, flax-seed and flour. Maryland and Virginia will add tobacco. North Carolina, pitch, tar, and turpentine. South Carolina, rice and indigo, and Georgia will sprinkle the whole composition with sawdust. Such an absurd jumble will you make if you attempt to form a union among such discordant materials as the thirteen British provinces.” On the other side, American commerce involved the import trade, consisting principally of English and continental manufactures, tea, and “India goods.” Sugar and molasses, brought from the West Indies, supplied the flourishing distilleries of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The carriage of slaves from Africa to the Southern colonies engaged hundreds of New England’s sailors and thousands of pounds of her capital. The disposition of imported goods in the colonies, though in part controlled by English factors located in America, employed also a large and important body of American merchants like the Willings and Morrises of Philadelphia; the Amorys, Hancocks, and Faneuils of Boston; and the Livingstons and Lows of New York. In their zeal and enterprise, they were worthy rivals of their English competitors, so celebrated for world-wide commercial operations. Though fully aware of the advantages they enjoyed in British markets and under the protection of the British navy, the American merchants were high-spirited and mettlesome, ready to contend with royal officers in order to shield American interests against outside interference.

Measured against the immense business of modern times, colonial commerce seems perhaps trivial. That, however, is not the test of its significance. It must be considered in relation to the growth of English colonial trade in its entirety—a relation which can be shown by a few startling figures. The whole export trade of England, including that to the colonies, was, in 1704, £6,509,000. On the eve of the American Revolution, namely, in 1772, English exports to the American colonies alone amounted to £6,024,000; in other words, almost as much as the whole foreign business of England two generations before. At the first date, colonial trade was but one-twelfth of the English export business; at the second date, it was considerably more than one-third. In 1704, Pennsylvania bought in English markets goods to the value of £11,459; in 1772 the purchases of the same colony amounted to £507,909. In short, Pennsylvania imports increased fifty times within sixty-eight years, amounting in 1772 to almost the entire export trade of England to the colonies at the opening of the century. The American colonies were indeed a great source of wealth to English merchants.
Intercolonial Commerce.—Although the bad roads of colonial times made overland transportation difficult and costly, the many rivers and harbors along the coast favored a lively water-borne trade among the colonies. The Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, and Susquehanna rivers in the North and the many smaller rivers in the South made it possible for goods to be brought from, and carried to, the interior regions in little sailing vessels with comparative ease. Sloops laden with manufactures, domestic and foreign, collected at some city like Providence, New York, or Philadelphia, skirted the coasts, visited small ports, and sailed up the navigable rivers to trade with local merchants who had for exchange the raw materials which they had gathered in from neighboring farms. Larger ships carried the grain, live stock, cloth, and hardware of New England to the Southern colonies, where they were traded for tobacco, leather, tar, and ship timber. From the harbors along the Connecticut shores there were frequent sailings down through Long Island Sound to Maryland, Virginia, and the distant Carolinas.
Growth of Towns.—In connection with this thriving trade and industry there grew up along the coast a number of prosperous commercial centers which were soon reckoned among the first commercial towns of the whole British empire, comparing favorably in numbers and wealth with such ports as Liverpool and Bristol. The statistical records of that time are mainly guesses; but we know that Philadelphia stood first in size among these towns. Serving as the port of entry for Pennsylvania, Delaware, and western Jersey, it had drawn within its borders, just before the Revolution, about 25,000 inhabitants. Boston was second in rank, with somewhat more than 20,000 people. New York, the “commercial capital of Connecticut and old East Jersey,” was slightly smaller than Boston, but growing at a steady rate. The fourth town in size was Charleston, South Carolina, with about 10,000 inhabitants. Newport in Rhode Island, a center of rum manufacture and shipping, stood fifth, with a population of about 7000. Baltimore and Norfolk were counted as “considerable towns.” In the interior, Hartford in Connecticut, Lancaster and York in Pennsylvania, and Albany in New York, with growing populations and increasing trade, gave prophecy of an urban America away from the seaboard. The other towns were straggling villages. Williamsburg, Virginia, for example, had about two hundred houses, in which dwelt a dozen families of the gentry and a few score of tradesmen. Inland county seats often consisted of nothing more than a log courthouse, a prison, and one wretched inn to house judges, lawyers, and litigants during the sessions of the court.
The leading towns exercised an influence on colonial opinion all out of proportion to their population. They were the centers of wealth, for one thing; of the press and political activity, for another. Merchants and artisans could readily take concerted action on public questions arising from their commercial operations. The towns were also centers for news, gossip, religious controversy, and political discussion. In the market places the farmers from the countryside learned of British policies and laws, and so, mingling with the townsmen, were drawn into the main currents of opinion which set in toward colonial nationalism and independence.

Britain and Its Colonies

Britain and its Colonies

The England that Queen Elizabeth bequeathed to the Scottish King James I in 1603, like the colonies it would plant, was a unique blend of elements. The language and the people themselves mixed Germanic and Latin ingredients. The Anglican Church mixed Protestant theology and Catholic rituals. And the growth of royal power paradoxically had been linked to the rise of English liberties, in which even Tudor monarchs took pride. In the course of their history, the English people have displayed a genius for “muddling through,” a gift for the pragmatic compromise that defies logic but in the light of experience somehow
works.

THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND
Dominated by England, the British Isles included the distinct kingdoms of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. England, set off from continental Europe by the English Channel, had safe frontiers after the union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603. Such comparative isolation enabled the nation to develop institutions quite different from those on the Continent.
Unlike the absolute monarchs of France and Spain, the British rulers had to share power with the aristocracy and a lesser aristocracy, known as the gentry, whose representatives formed the bicameral legislature known as Parliament.

By 1600 the decline of feudal practices was far advanced. The great nobles, decimated by the Wars of the Roses, had been brought to heel by Tudor monarchs and their ranks filled with men loyal to the crown. In fact the only nobles left, strictly speaking, were those who sat in the House of Lords. All others were commoners, and among their ranks the aristocratic pecking order ran through a great class of landholding squires, distinguished mainly by their wealth and bearing the simple titles of “esquire” and “gentleman,” as did many well-to-do townsmen. They in turn mingled freely, and often intermarried, with the classes of yeomen (small freehold farmers) and merchants.

ENGLISH LIBERTIES
It was to these middle classes that the Tudors looked for support and, for want of bureaucrats or a standing army, local government. Chief reliance in the English counties was on the country gentlemen, who usually served as officials without pay. Government, therefore, allowed a large measure of local initiative. Self-rule in the counties and
towns became a habit—one that, along with the offices of justice of the peace and sheriff, English colonists took along to the New World as part of their cultural baggage.

In the making of laws, the monarch’s subjects consented through representatives in the House of Commons. Subjects could be taxed only with the consent of Parliament. By its control of the purse strings, Parliament drew other strands of power into its hands. This structure of powers served as an unwritten constitution. The Magna Carta (Great Charter) of 1215 was a
statement of privileges wrested by certain nobles from the king, but it became part of a broader assumption that the people as a whole had rights that even the monarch could not violate.

A further safeguard of English liberty was the tradition of common law, which had developed since the twelfth century in royal courts established to check the arbitrary power of local nobles.Without laws to cover every detail, judges had to exercise their own ideas of fairness in settling disputes. Decisions once made became precedents for subsequent decisions, and over the years a body of judge-made law developed, the outgrowth more of practical experience than of abstract logic. The courts evolved the principle that people could be arrested or their goods seized only upon a warrant issued by a
court and that individuals were entitled to a trial by a jury of their peers (their equals) in accordance with established rules of evidence.

ENGLISH ENTERPRISE
English liberties inspired a sense of personal initiative and enterprise that spawned prosperity and empire. The ranks of entrepreneurs and adventurers were constantly replenished by the younger sons of the squirearchy, cut off from the estate that the oldest son inherited according to the law of primogeniture (or firstborn). At the same time the
formation of joint-stock companies spurred commercial expansion. These entrepreneurial companies were the ancestors of the modern corporation, in which stockholders, not the government, shared the risks and profits, sometimes for a single venture but more and more on a permanent basis. In the late sixteenth century some of the larger companies managed to get royal charters that entitled them to monopolies in certain areas and even government powers in their outposts. Such companies would become the first instruments of colonization.

For all the vaunted glories of English liberty and enterprise, it was not the best of times for the common people. During the late sixteenth century the “lower sort” in Britain experienced a population explosion that outstripped the ability of the economy to support so many workers. An additional strain on the population was the “enclosure” of farmlands where peasants had lived and worked. For more than two centuries, serfdom had been on the way to extinction as the feudal duties of serfs were transformed into rents and the serfs themselves into tenants. But while tenancy gave people a degree of independence, it also allowed landlords to increase demands and, as the trade in woolen products grew, to “enclose” farmlands and evict the human tenants in favor of sheep. The enclosure movement of the sixteenth century, coupled with the rising population, gave rise to the great number of beggars and rogues who peopled the literature of Elizabethan times and gained immortality in Mother Goose: “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark. The beggars have come to town.” The needs of this displaced peasant population, on the move throughout Great Britain, became another powerful argument for colonial
expansion. The displaced poor migrated from farms to crowded towns and cities. London became a powerful magnet for vagabonds. By the seventeenth century the English capital was notorious for its filth, poverty, crime, and class tensions—all of which helped persuade the ruling elite to send idle and larcenous commoners abroad to settle new colonies.

PARLIAMENT AND THE STUARTS
With the death of Elizabeth, who never married and did not give birth to an heir, the Tudor family line ran out and the throne fell to the first of the Stuarts, whose dynasty would span most of the seventeenth century, a turbulent time during which the English planted their overseas empire. In 1603 James VI of Scotland, son of the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, and great-great-grandson of Henry VII, became James I of England—as Elizabeth had planned. A man of ponderous learning, James fully earned his reputation as the “wisest fool in Christendom.” Tall and broad-shouldered, he was bisexual, conceited, profligate, and lazy and possessed an undiplomatic tongue. He lectured the people on every topic but remained blind to English traditions and sensibilities.Whereas the Tudors had wielded absolute power through constitutional forms, James promoted the theory of divine right, by which monarchs answered only to God.Whereas the Puritans hoped to find a Presbyterian ally in their opposition to Anglican trappings, they found instead a testy autocrat who
promised to banish them. He even offended Anglicans, by deciding to end his cousin Elizabeth’s war with Catholic Spain.

Charles I, who succeeded his father James, in 1625, proved even more stubborn about royal power. He disbanded Parliament from 1629 to 1640 and levied taxes by decree. In the religious arena the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, directed a systematic persecution of Puritans but finally overreached himself when he tried to impose Anglican worship on Presbyterian Scots. In 1638 Scotland rose in revolt, and in 1640 Charles called Parliament to raise money for the defense of his kingdom. The “Long Parliament” impeached Laud instead and condemned to death the king’s chief
minister. In 1642, when the king tried to arrest five members of Parliament, civil war erupted between the “Roundheads,” who backed Parliament, and the “Cavaliers,” who supported the king.
In 1646 Royalist resistance collapsed, and parliamentary forces captured the king. Parliament, however, could not agree on a permanent settlement. A dispute arose between Presbyterians and Independents (who preferred a congregational church government), and in 1648 the Independents purged the Presbyterians, leaving a “Rump Parliament” that then instigated the trial and execution of King Charles I on charges of treason.
Oliver Cromwell, the tenacious commander of the army, operated like a military dictator, ruling first through a council chosen by Parliament (the Commonwealth) and, after forcible dissolution of Parliament, as lord protector  (the Protectorate). Cromwell extended religious toleration to all Britons except Catholics and Anglicans, but his arbitrary governance and his stern moralistic codes provoked growing public resentment. When, after his death in 1658, his son proved too weak to carry on, the army once again took control, permitted new elections for Parliament, and in 1660
supported the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, son of the martyred king. Charles II accepted as terms of the Restoration settlement the principle that he must rule jointly with Parliament. By tact or shrewd maneuvering, he managed to hold his throne. His younger brother, the duke of York (who became James II upon succeeding to the throne in 1685), was less flexible. He openly avowed Catholicism and assumed the same unyielding stance as the first two Stuarts. The people could bear it so long as they expected one of his Protestant daughters, Mary or Anne, to succeed him. In 1688, however, the birth of a son who would be reared a Catholic finally brought matters to a crisis. Leaders of Parliament invited Mary and her husband, William of Orange, a Dutch prince, to assume the throne jointly, and James fled the country.

By this “Glorious Revolution,” Parliament finally established its freedom from royal control. Under the Bill of Rights, in 1689,William and Mary gave up the royal prerogatives of suspending laws, erecting special courts, keeping a standing army, or levying taxes except by Parliament’s consent. They further agreed to hold frequent legislative sessions and allow freedom of speech in Parliament, freedom of petition to the crown, and restrictions against excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments. The Act of Toleration of 1689 extended a degree of freedom of worship to all Christians except Catholics and Unitarians, although dissenters from the established church still had few political rights. In 1701 the Act of Settlement ensured Protestant succession through Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714). And by the Act of Union in 1707, England and Scotland became the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE
During these eventful years all but one of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies had their start. They began as corporations rather than new countries. In 1606 King James I chartered a joint-stock enterprise called the Virginia Company, with two divisions, the First Colony of London and the Second Colony of Plymouth. The London group of investors could plant a settlement between the 34th and 38th parallels, the Plymouth group between the 41st and 45th parallels, and either between the 38th and 41st parallels, provided they kept 100 miles apart. The stockholders expected a potential return from gold and other minerals; products—such as wine, citrus fruits, and olive oil—that would free England from dependence on Spain; trade with the Indians; pitch, tar, potash, and other forest products needed for naval use; and perhaps a passage to east Asia. Some investors saw colonization as an opportunity to transplant the growing number of jobless vagrants from Britain to the New World. Others dreamed of finding another Aztec or Inca Empire. Few if any foresaw what the first English colony would actually become: a place to grow tobacco.

From the outset the pattern of English colonization diverged significantly from the Spanish pattern, which involved conquering highly sophisticated peoples and regulating all aspects of colonial life.While interest in America was growing, the English were already involved in planting settlements, or “plantations,” in Ireland, which the English had conquered by military force under Queen Elizabeth. Within their own pale (or limit) of settlement in Ireland, the English set about transplanting their familiar way of life insofar as possible.

The English would apply the same pattern as they settled North America, subjugating (and converting) the Indians there as they had the Irish in Ireland. Yet in America the English settled along the Atlantic seaboard, where the native populations were relatively sparse. There was no Aztec or Inca Empire to conquer. The colonists thus had to establish their own communities in a largely wilderness setting.Describing the “settlement” of the Atlantic seaboard is somewhat misleading, however, for the British colonists who arrived in the seventeenth century rarely settled in one place for long. They were migrants more than settlers, people who had been on the move in Britain and continued to pursue new opportunities in different places once they arrived in America.

VIRGINIA
The London group of the Virginia Company planted the first permanent colony in Virginia, named after Elizabeth I, “the Virgin Queen.”  On May 6, 1607, three tiny ships carrying 105 men reached Chesapeake Bay after four storm-tossed months at sea. They chose a river with a northwest bend—in the hope of finding a passage to Asia—and settled about forty miles inland, to hide from marauding Spaniards.

The river they called the James and the colony, Jamestown. The seaweary colonists began building a fort, thatched huts, a storehouse, and a church. They then set to planting, but most were either townsmen unfamiliar with farming or “gentleman” adventurers who scorned manual labor. They had come expecting to find gold, friendly natives, and easy living. Instead they found disease, starvation, dissension, and death. Ignorant of woodlore, they did not know how to exploit the area’s abundant game and fish. Supplies from England were undependable, and only some effective leadership and trade with the Indians, who taught the colonists to grow maize, enabled them to survive.

The Indians of the region were loosely organized. Powhatan was the powerful, charismatic chief of numerous Algonquian-speaking towns in eastern Virginia, representing over 10,000 Indians. The Indians making up the socalled Powhatan Confederacy were largely an agricultural people focused on raising corn. They lived along rivers in fortified towns and resided in wood houses sheathed with bark. Chief Powhatan collected tribute from the tribes he had conquered—fully 80 percent of the corn that they grew was handed over. Despite occasional clashes with the colonists, the Indians initially adopted a stance of nervous assistance and watchful waiting. Powhatan developed a lucrative trade with the colonists, exchanging corn and hides for hatchets, swords, and muskets; he realized too late that the newcomers intended to expropriate his lands and subjugate his people.

The colonists, as it happened, had more than a match for Powhatan in Captain John Smith, a stocky twenty-seven-year-old soldier of fortune with rare powers of leadership and self-promotion. The Virginia Company, impressed by Smith’s exploits in foreign wars, had appointed him a member of the council to manage the new colony in America. It was a wise decision. Of the original 105 settlers, only 38 survived the first nine months. With the colonists on the verge of starvation, Smith imposed strict discipline and forced all to labor, declaring that “he that will not work shall not eat.” In dealing with mutinies, skirmishes, and ambushes, he imprisoned, whipped, and forced colonists to labor. Smith also bargained with the Indians and explored and mapped the Chesapeake region. Through his efforts, Jamestown survived, but Smith’s dictatorial acts did not endear him to many of the colonists.

In 1609 the Virginia Company moved to reinforce Jamestown. More colonists were dispatched, including several women. A new charter replaced the largely ineffective council with an all-powerful governor whose council was only advisory. The company then lured new investors and attracted new settlers with the promise of free land after seven years of labor. The company in effect had given up hope of prospering except through the sale of land, which would rise in value as the colony grew. The governor, the noble Lord De La Warr (Delaware), sent as interim governor Sir Thomas Gates. In 1609 Gates set out with a fleet of nine vessels and about 500 passengers and crew. On the way he was shipwrecked on Bermuda, where he and the other survivors wintered in comparative ease, subsisting on fish, fowl, and wild pigs. (Their story was transformed by William Shakespeare into his play The Tempest.) Most of the fleet did reach Jamestown, however. Some 400 settlers overwhelmed the remnant of about 80. All chance that John Smith might control things was lost when he suffered a gunpowder burn and sailed back to England. The consequence was anarchy and the “starving time” of the winter of 1609–1610, during which most of the colonists, weakened by hunger, died of disease or starvation. A prolonged drought had hindered efforts to grow food. By May 1610, when Gates and his companions made their way to Jamestown on two small ships built in Bermuda, only about 60 settlers remained alive. During the winter of 1610, as starvation grew pervasive, desperate colonists consumed their horses, cats, and dogs, then rats and mice. A few even ate the leather from their shoes and boots. Some fled to nearby Indian villages, only to be welcomed with arrows. One man was executed for killing his pregnant wife and feasting on her remains. In June 1610, as the colonists made their way down the river toward the sea, the new governor, Lord Delaware, providentially arrived with three ships and 150 men. The colonists returned to Jamestown and created new settlements upstream at Henrico (Richmond) and two more downstream, near the mouth of the river. It was a critical turning point for the colony, whose survival required a combination of stern measures and not a little luck. When Lord Delaware returned to England in 1611, Gates took charge of the colony and established a strict system of laws. Severe even by the standards of a ruthless age, the new code enforced a militaristic discipline needed for survival.When one laborer was caught stealing oatmeal, the authorities had a long needle thrust through his tongue, chained him to a tree, and let him starve to death as a grisly example to the community. Desperate colonists who fled to join the Indians were caught and hanged or burned at the stake. The new colonial regime also assaulted the local Indians. English colonists attacked Indian villages and destroyed their crops. One commander reported that they marched a captured Indian queen and her children to the river, where they “put the Children to death . . . by throwing them overboard and shooting out their brains in the water.” Over the next seven years the Jamestown colony limped along until it gradually found a reason for being: tobacco. The plant had been grown in the West Indies for years, and smoking had become a popular habit in Europe. In 1612 John Rolfe had begun to experiment with the harsh Virginia tobacco. Eventually he got hold of some seed from the more savory Spanish varieties, and by 1616 the weed had become a profitable export staple. Even though King James dismissed smoking as “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs,” he swallowed his objections to the “noxious weed”when he realized how much revenue it provided the monarchy. Virginia’s tobacco production soared during the seventeenth century. Tobacco was such a profitable crop for Virginia planters that they could afford to purchase more indentured servants, thus increasing the flow of immigrants to the colony. Meanwhile John Rolfe had made another contribution to stability by marrying Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan. Pocahontas (a nickname usually translated as “Frisky”; her given
name was Matoaka) had been a familiar figure in Jamestown almost from the beginning. In 1607, then only eleven, she figured in perhaps the bestknown story of the settlement, her plea for the life of John Smith. Smith had gotten into trouble when he led a small group up the James River in search of a northwest passage. When the Englishmen trespassed on Powhatan’s territory, the Indians attacked. Smith was wounded and captured. Others in his scouting party were tortured and disemboweled. Smith was marched to Powhatan’s village, interrogated, and readied for execution. At that point, according to Smith, Pocahontas made a dramatic appeal for his life, and Powhatan eventually agreed to release the foreigner in exchange for muskets, hatchets, beads, and trinkets.

Schoolchildren still learn the dramatic story of Pocahontas intervening to save Smith. Such dramatic events are magical; they inspire movies, excite our imagination, animate history—and confuse it. Pocahontas and John Smith were never in love. Moreover, the young Indian princess saved the swashbuckling Smith on more than one occasion. Then she herself was captured. In 1614 the Jamestown settlers kidnapped Pocahontas in an effort to blackmail Powhatan. As the weeks passed, however, she surprised her captors by choosing to join them. She embraced Christianity, was renamed Rebecca, and fell in love with John Rolfe. They married and in 1616 moved with their infant son, Thomas, to London. There the young princess drew excited attention from the royal family and curious Londoners. But only a few months after arriving, Rebecca, aged twenty, contracted a lung disease and died.

In 1618 Sir Edwin Sandys, a prominent member of Parliament, became head of the Virginia Company and instituted a series of reforms. First of all he inaugurated a new “headright” policy: anyone who bought a share in the company and could get to Virginia could have fifty acres, and fifty more for any servants. The following year the company relaxed the colony’s military regime and promised that the settlers would have the “rights of Englishmen,” including a representative assembly.

A new governor arrived with instructions to put the new order into effect, and on July 30, 1619, the first General Assembly of Virginia, including the governor, six councilors, and twenty-two burgesses, met in the church at Jamestown and deliberated for five days, “sweating & stewing, and battling flies and mosquitoes.” It was an eventful year in two other respects. The promoters also saw a need to send out more wives for the men. During 1619 a ship arrived with ninety young women, who were to be sold to likely husbands of their own choice for the cost of transportation (about 125 pounds of tobacco). And a Dutch ship stopped by and dropped off “20 Negars,” the first Africans known to have reached English America. The profitable tobacco trade intensified the settlers’ lust for land. They especially coveted Indian fields because they had already been cleared and were ready to be planted. In 1622 the Indians, led by Opechancanough, Powhatan’s
brother and successor, tried to repel the land-grabbing English. They killed one fourth of the settlers, some 350 colonists, including John Rolfe (who had returned from England). In England, John Smith denounced the Indian assault as a “massacre” and dismissed the “savages” as “cruel beasts” whose “brutishness” exceeded that of wild animals.Whatever moral doubts had earlier plagued English settlers were now swept away. The English thereafter sought to wipe out the Indian presence along their frontier. Some 14,000 men, women, and children had migrated to Jamestown since 1607, but most of them had died; the population in 1624 stood at a precarious 1,132. Despite the initial achievements of the company, after about 1617 a handful of insiders appropriated large estates and began to monopolize the indentured workers. Some made fortunes from the tobacco boom, but most of the thousands sent out died before they could prove themselves. In 1624 an English court dissolved the struggling Virginia Company, and Virginia became a royal colony. The king did not renew instructions for a legislative assembly, but his governors found it impossible to rule the troublesome Virginians without one.
Annual assemblies met after 1629, although they were not recognized by the crown for another ten years. After 1622 relations with the Indians continued in a state of what the governor’s council called “perpetual enmity.” The combination of warfare and disease decimated the Indians in Virginia. The 24,000 Algonquians who inhabited the colony in 1607 were reduced to 2,000 by 1669.

Sir William Berkeley, who arrived as Virginia’s governor in 1642, presided over the colony’s growth for most of the next thirty-five years. The turmoil of Virginia’s early days gave way to a more stable period. Tobacco prices peaked, and the large planters began to consolidate their economic gains through political action. They assumed key civic roles as justices of the peace and sheriffs, helped initiate internal improvements such as roads and bridges, supervised elections, and collected taxes. They also formed the able-bodied men into local militias. Despite the presence of a royal governor, the elected Virginia assembly continued to assert its sovereignty, making laws for the colony and resisting the governor’s encroachments. Virginia at midcentury continued to serve as a magnet for new settlers. As the sharp rise in tobacco profits leveled off, planters began to grow corn and raise cattle. The increase in the food supply helped lower mortality rates and fuel a rapid rise in population. By 1650 there were 15,000 white residents of Virginia. Many former servants became planters in their own right.Women typically improved their status through marriage. If they outlived their husbands— and many did—they inherited the property and often increased their wealth through second and even third marriages.
The relentless stream of new settlers into Virginia exerted constant pressure on Indian lands and produced unwanted economic effects. The increase in the number of planters spurred a dramatic rise in agricultural production. That in turn caused the cost of land to soar and the price of tobacco to plummet. To sustain their competitive advantage, the largest planters bought up the most fertile land along the coast, thereby forcing freed servants to become tenants or claim less fertile land inland. In either case the tenants found themselves at a disadvantage. They grew dependent on planters for land and credit, and small farmers along the frontier became more vulnerable to Indian attacks.

The plight of the common folk worsened after 1660, when a restored monarchy under Charles II instituted new trade regulations for the colonies. By 1676 one fourth of the free white men in Virginia were landless.Vagabonds roamed the roads, squatting on private property, working at odd jobs, or poaching game or engaging in other petty crimes in order to survive. Alarmed by the growing social unrest, the large planters who controlled the assembly— generally ruthless and callous men—lengthened terms of indenture, passed more stringent vagrancy laws, stiffened punishments, and stripped the landless of their political rights. Such efforts only increased social friction.

BACON’S REBELLION
A variety of simmering tensions—caused by depressed tobacco prices, rising taxes, roaming livestock, and crowds of
freed servants greedily eyeing Indian lands—contributed to the tangled events that have come to be labeled Bacon’s Rebellion. The roots of the revolt grew out of a festering hatred for the domineering colonial governor, William Berkeley. He had limited his circle of friends to the wealthiest
planters, and he had granted them most of the frontier land and public offices. He despised commoners. The large planters who dominated the assembly levied high taxes to finance Berkeley’s regime, which in turn supported their interests at the expense of the small farmers and servants. With little nearby land available, newly freed indentured servants were
forced to migrate westward in their quest for farms. Their lust for land led them to displace the Indians.When Governor Berkeley failed to support the aspiring farmers, they rebelled. The tyrannical governor expected as much. Just before the outbreak of rebellion, Berkeley had remarked in a letter: “How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore, Endebted, Discontented and Armed.” The discontent turned to violence in 1675 when a petty squabble between a frontier planter and the Doeg Indians on the Potomac River led to the murder of the planter’s herdsman and, in turn, to retaliation by frontier militiamen, who killed ten or more Doegs and, by mistake, fourteen Susquehannocks.
Soon a force of Virginia and Maryland militiamen attacked the Susquehannocks and murdered five chieftains who had come out to negotiate. The enraged survivors took their revenge on frontier settlements. Scattered attacks continued on down to the James River, where Nathaniel Bacon’s overseer was killed.

By then, their revenge accomplished, the Susquehannocks had pulled back. What followed had less to do with a state of war than with a state of hysteria. Governor Berkeley proposed that the assembly erect a series of forts along the frontier. But that would not slake the English thirst for revenge— nor would it open new lands to settlement. Besides, it would be expensive.
Some thought Berkeley was out to preserve a profitable fur trade for himself. In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon defied Governor Berkeley’s authority by assuming command of a group of frontier vigilantes. The tall, slender twentynine- year-old Bacon, a graduate of Cambridge University, had been in Virginia only two years, but he had been well set up by an English father relieved to get his vain, ambitious, hot-tempered son out of the country. Later historians would praise Bacon as the “Torchbearer of the Revolution” and leader of the first struggle of common folk versus aristocrats. In part that was true. The rebellion he led was largely a battle of servants, small farmers, and even slaves against Virginia’s wealthiest planters and political leaders. But Bacon was also a rich squire’s spoiled son with a talent for trouble. It was his ruthless assaults against peaceful Indians and his desire for power and land rather than any commitment to democratic principles that sparked his
conflict with the governing authorities.

Bacon despised the Indians and resolved to kill them all. Berkeley opposed Bacon’s genocidal plan not because he liked Indians but because he wanted to protect his lucrative monopoly over the deerskin trade with the Indians. Bacon ordered the governor arrested. Berkeley’s forces resisted—but only feebly—and Bacon’s men burned Jamestown. Bacon, however, could not savor the victory long; he fell ill and died of dysentery a month later. Governor Berkeley quickly regained control; he hanged twenty-three rebels and confiscated several estates. When his men captured one of Bacon’s closest lieutenants, Berkeley gleefully exclaimed: “I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in
half an hour.” For such severity the king denounced Berkeley as a “fool” and recalled him to England, where he died within a year. A royal commission made peace treaties with the remaining Indians, about 1,500 of whose descendants
still live in Virginia on tiny reservations guaranteed them in 1677. The end result of Bacon’s Rebellion was that new lands were opened to the colonists, and the wealthy planters became more cooperative with the small farmers.

MARYLAND
In 1634, ten years after Virginia became a royal colony, a neighboring settlement appeared on the northern shores of Chesapeake Bay. Named Maryland in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, it was granted to Lord Baltimore by King Charles I and became the first proprietary colony— that is, it was owned by an individual, not a joint-stock company. Sir George
Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, had announced in 1625 his conversion to Catholicism and sought the colony as a refuge for English Catholics, who were subjected to discrimination at home. His son, Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, actually founded the colony. In 1634 Calvert planted the first settlement in Maryland at St.Marys, on a small stream near the mouth of the Potomac River. Calvert brought Catholic gentlemen as landholders, but a majority of the servants were Protestants. The charter gave Calvert power to make laws with the consent of the freemen (all property holders). The first legislative assembly met in 1635 and divided into two houses in 1650, with governor and council sitting separately. This action was instigated by the predominantly Protestant freemen— largely servants who had become landholders and immigrants from Virginia. The charter also empowered the proprietor to grant huge manorial estates, and Maryland had some sixty before 1676, but the Lords Baltimore soon found that to draw settlers they had to offer them small farms. The colony was meant to rely upon mixed farming, but its fortunes, like those of Virginia, soon came to depend upon tobacco.
SETTLING NEW ENGLAND

Far to the north of the Chesapeake Bay colonies, quite different settlements were emerging. The New England colonists were generally made up of middle-class families who could pay their own way across the Atlantic. In the Northeast there were relatively few indentured servants, and there was no planter elite. Most male settlers were small farmers, merchants, seamen, or fishermen. New England also became home to more women than did the southern colonies. Although its soil was not as fertile as that of the Chesapeake and its farmers not as wealthy as the southern planters, New England was a much healthier place to settle. Because of its colder climate, the region did not foster the infectious diseases that ravaged the southern colonies. Life expectancy was much longer. During the seventeenth century only 21,000 colonists arrived in New England, compared with the 120,000 who went to the Chesapeake. But by 1700 New England’s white population exceeded that of Maryland and Virginia.

Most early New Englanders were devout Puritans, who embraced a much more rigorous faith than the Anglicans of Virginia and Maryland. In 1650, for example, Massachusetts boasted one minister for every 415 persons, compared with one minister per 3,239 persons in Virginia. The Puritans who arrived in America believed themselves to be on a divine mission to create a model society committed to the proper worship of God. In their efforts to separate themselves from a sinful England and its authoritarian Anglican bishops, New England’s zealous Puritans sought to create “holy commonwealths”
that would help inspire a spiritual transformation in their homeland. In the New World these self-described “saints” could purify their churches of all Catholic and Anglican rituals, supervise one another in practicing a communal faith, and enact a code of laws and a government structure based on biblical principles. Such a holy settlement, they hoped, would provide a beacon of righteousness for a wicked England to emulate.

PLYMOUTH
In 1620 a band of English settlers headed for Virginia strayed off course and made landfall at Cape Cod, off the coast of Massachusetts. There they decided to establish a colony, naming it Plymouth after the English port from which they had embarked. The “Pilgrims” who established the Plymouth Plantation belonged to the most uncompromising sect of Puritans, the Separatists, who had severed all ties with the Church of England. Many Separatists had fled to Holland in 1607 to escape persecution. After ten years in the Dutch city of Leiden, they longed for English ways and the English flag. If they could not have them at home, perhaps they might transplant them to the New World.

The Leiden Separatists secured a land patent from the Virginia Company and set up a joint-stock company. In 1620, 102 men, women, and children, led by William Bradford, crammed aboard the three-masted Mayflower. Their ranks included both “saints” (people recognized as having been elected by God for salvation) and “strangers” (those yet to receive the gift of grace). The latter group included John Alden, a cooper (barrel maker), and Myles Standish, a soldier hired to organize their defenses. The stormy voyage had led them to Cape Cod. “Being thus arrived at safe harbor, and brought safe to land,”William Bradford wrote, “they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean.” Since they were outside the jurisdiction of any organized government, forty-one of the Pilgrim leaders entered into a formal agreement to abide by the laws made by leaders of their own choosing—the Mayflower
Compact.

On December 26 the Mayflower reached the harbor of the place they named Plymouth and stayed there until April to give shelter and support while the Pilgrims built dwellings on the site of an abandoned Indian village.Nearly half the colonists died of exposure and disease, but friendly relations with the neighboring Wampanoag Indians proved their salvation. In the spring of 1621, the colonists met Squanto, an Indian who spoke English and showed them how to grow maize. By autumn the Pilgrims had a bumper crop of corn, a flourishing fur trade, and a supply of lumber for shipment. To celebrate, they held a harvest feast in the company of Chief Massasoit and the Wampanoags. That event provided the inspiration for what has become Thanksgiving.

In 1623 Plymouth gave up its original communal economy and stipulated that now each male settler was to provide for his family from his own land. Throughout its separate existence, until absorbed into Massachusetts in 1691, the Plymouth colony remained in the anomalous position of holding a land grant but no charter of government from any English authority. The government grew instead out of the Mayflower Compact, which was neither exactly a constitution nor a precedent for later constitutions. Rather, it was the obvious recourse of a group that had made a covenant (or agreement) to form a church and believed God had made a covenant with them to provide a way to salvation. Thus the civil government grew naturally out of the church government, and the members of each were identical at the start. The signers of the compact at first met as the General Court, which chose the governor and his assistants (or council). Later others were admitted as members,
or “freemen,” but only church members were eligible. Eventually, as the colony grew, the General Court became a body of representatives from the various towns.
MASSACHUSETTS BAY
The Plymouth colony’s population never rose above 7,000, and after ten years it was overshadowed by its larger neighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It, too, was originally intended to be a holy commonwealth made up of religious folk bound together in the harmonious worship of God and the pursuit of their “callings.” Like the Pilgrims, most of the Puritans who colonized Massachusetts Bay were Congregationalists, who formed self-governing churches with membership limited to “visible saints”—those who could demonstrate receipt of the gift of God’s grace. But unlike the Plymouth Separatists, the Puritans (who referred to themselves as the “godly”) still hoped to reform the Church of England, and therefore they were called Nonseparating Congregationalists. In 1629 King Charles I issued a charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company to a group of English Puritans led by John Winthrop, a lawyer from East Anglia animated by profound religious onvictions. Winthrop, tall and strong with a long face, resolved to use the colony as a refuge for persecuted Puritans and as an instrument for building a “wilderness Zion” in America.

Winthrop shrewdly took advantage of a fateful omission in the royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company: the usual proviso that the company maintain its home office in England. Winthrop’s group took its
charter with them, thereby transferring government authority to Massachusetts Bay, where they hoped to
ensure Puritan control. So unlike the Virginia Company, which ruled Jamestown from London, the Massachusetts Bay Company was selfgoverning. In 1630 the Arbella, with John Winthrop and the charter aboard, embarked with six other ships for Massachusetts. In “A Modell of Christian Charity,” a lay sermon delivered on board,Winthrop told his fellow Puritans that “we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill”—a shining example of what a godly community could be. They landed in Massachusetts, and by the end of the year seventeen ships bearing 1,000 more colonists had arrived. As settlers—both Puritan and non-Puritan—poured into the region, Boston became the new colony’s chief city and capital. The Arbella migrants proved to be the vanguard of a massive movement, the Great Migration, that carried some 80,000 Britons to new settlements around the world over the next decade. Fleeing religious persecution and economic depression at home, they gravitated to Ireland, the Netherlands, and the Rhineland. But the majority traveled to the New World. They went not only to New England and the Chesapeake but also to new English settlements in the Caribbean. The transfer of the Massachusetts charter, whereby an English trading company evolved into a provincial government, was a unique venture in colonization. Under the royal charter, power in the company rested with the Massachusetts General Court, which elected the governor and the assistants. The General Court consisted of shareholders, called freemen (those who had the “freedom of the company”), but only a few besides Winthrop and his assistants had such status. That suited Winthrop and his friends, but then over 100 settlers asked to be admitted as freemen. Rather than risk trouble, the ruling group finally admitted 118 in 1631, stipulating that only church members could become freemen.

At first the freemen had no power except to choose “assistants,” who in turn chose the governor and deputy governor. The procedure violated provisions of the charter, but Winthrop kept the document hidden and few knew of the exact provisions. Controversy simmered until 1634, when each town sent two delegates to Boston to confer on matters coming before the General Court. There they demanded to see the charter, which Winthrop reluctantly produced, and they read that the power to pass laws and levy taxes rested in the General Court. Winthrop argued that the body of freemen had grown too large, but when it met, the General Court responded by turning itself into a representative body with two or three deputies to represent each town. The freemen also chose a new governor, and Winthrop did not resume the office until three years later. A final stage in the evolution of the government, a two-house legislature, came in 1644, when, according to Winthrop, “there fell out a great business upon a very small occasion.” The “small occasion” pitted a poor widow against a well-to-do merchant over ownership of a stray sow. The General Court, being the supreme judicial as well as legislative body, was the final authority in the case. Popular sympathy and the deputies favored the widow, but the assistants disagreed. The case was finally settled out of court, but the assistants feared being outvoted on some greater occasion. They therefore secured a separation into two houses, and Massachusetts thenceforth had a bicameral assembly, the deputies and assistants sitting apart, with all decisions requiring a majority in each house.

Thus over a period of fourteen years, the Massachusetts Bay Company, a trading corporation, evolved into the governing body of a commonwealth. Membership in a Puritan church replaced the purchase of stock as the means of becoming a freeman, which was to say a voter. The General Court, like Parliament, became a representative body of two houses: the House of Assistants corresponding roughly to the House of Lords and the House of Deputies corresponding to the House of Commons. The charter remained unchanged, but practice under the charter was quite different from the original  expectation. It is hard to exaggerate the crucial role played by John Winthrop in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He had been a man of limited means and little stature who nonetheless, as the new colony’s godly governor, summoned up extraordinary leadership abilities. A devout pragmatist who often governed as an enlightened despot, he steadfastly sought to steer a middle course between clerical absolutists and Separatist zealots. Winthrop firmly believed that God had chosen him to create a godly community in the New World. His stern charisma and his indefatigable faith in the ideal of Christian republicanism enabled him to fend off Indian attacks and antinomian insurgencies as well as political challenges. He also thwarted the efforts of powerful foes in England who challenged the infant colony’s legality. An iron-souled man governing a God-saturated community, John Winthrop  provided the foundation not only for a colony but also for major elements in America’s cultural and political development.

The Colonial Period

The Colonial Period

NEW PEOPLES
Most settlers who came to America in the 17th century were English, but there were also Dutch, Swedes and Germans in the middle region, a few French Huguenots in South Carolina and elsewhere, slaves from Africa, primarily in the South, and a scattering of Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese throughout the colonies. After 1680 England ceased to be the chief source of immigration. Thousands of refugees fled continental Europe to escape the path of war. Many left their homelands to avoid the poverty induced by government oppression and absentee-landlordism.
By 1690 the American population had risen to a quarter of a million. From then on, it doubled every 25 years until, in 1775, it numbered more than 2.5 million. Although a family could move from Massachusetts to Virginia or from South Carolina to Pennsylvania, without major readjustment, distinctions between individual colonies were marked. They were even more so between the three regional groupings of colonies.

NEW ENGLAND
Society in the middle colonies was far more varied, cosmopolitan and tolerant than in New England. In many ways, Pennsylvania and Delaware owed their initial success to William Penn. Under his guidance, Pennsylvania functioned smoothly and grew rapidly. By 1685 its population was almost 9,000. The heart of the colony was Philadelphia, a city soon to be known for its broad, tree-shaded streets, substantial brick and stone houses, and busy docks. By the end of the colonial period, nearly a century later, 30,000 people lived there, representing many languages, creeds and trades. Their talent for successful business enterprise made the city one of the thriving centers of colonial America.

Though the Quakers dominated in Philadelphia, elsewhere in Pennsylvania others were well represented. Germans became the colony’s most skillful farmers. Important, too, were cottage industries such as weaving, shoemaking, cabinetmaking and other crafts.

Pennsylvania was also the principal gateway into the New World for the Scots-Irish, who moved into the colony in the early 18th century. “Bold and indigent strangers,” as one Pennsylvania official called them, they hated the English and were suspicious of all government. The Scots-Irish tended to settle in the back country, where they cleared land and lived by hunting and subsistence farming.

As mixed as the people were in Pennsylvania, New York best illustrated the polyglot nature of America. By 1646 the population along the Hudson River included Dutch, French, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, English, Scots, Irish, Germans, Poles, Bohemians, Portuguese and Italians — the forerunners of millions to come. The Dutch continued to exercise an important social and economic influence on the New York region long after the fall of New Netherland and their integration into the British colonial system. Their sharpstepped, gable roofs became a permanent part of the city’s architecture, and their merchants gave Manhattan much of its original bustling, commercial atmosphere.

THE MIDDLE COLONIES
Society in the middle colonies was far more varied, cosmopolitan and tolerant than in New England. In many ways, Pennsylvania and Delaware owed their initial success to William Penn. Under his guidance, Pennsylvania functioned smoothly and grew rapidly. By 1685 its population was almost 9,000. The heart of the colony was Philadelphia, a city soon to be known for its broad, tree-shaded streets, substantial brick and stone houses, and busy docks. By the end of the colonial period, nearly a century later, 30,000 people lived there, representing many languages, creeds and trades. Their talent for successful business enterprise made the city one of the thriving centers of colonial America.

Though the Quakers dominated in Philadelphia, elsewhere in Pennsylvania others were well represented. Germans became the colony’s most skillful farmers. Important, too, were cottage industries such as weaving, shoemaking, cabinetmaking and other crafts. Pennsylvania was also the principal gateway into the New World for the Scots-Irish, who moved into the colony in the early 18th century. “Bold and indigent strangers,” as one Pennsylvania official called them, they hated the English and were suspicious of all government. The Scots-Irish tended to settle in the back country, where they cleared land and lived by hunting and subsistence farming.
As mixed as the people were in Pennsylvania, New York best illustrated the polyglot nature of America.By 1646 the population along the Hudson River included Dutch, French, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, English, Scots, Irish, Germans, Poles, Bohemians, Portuguese and Italians — the forerunners of millions to come.
The Dutch continued to exercise an important social and economic influence on the New York region long after the fall of New Netherland and their integration into the British colonial system. Their sharpstepped, gable roofs became a permanent part of the city’s architecture, and their merchants gave Manhattan much of its original bustling, commercial atmosphere.

THE SOUTHERN COLONIES
In contrast to New England and the middle colonies were the predominantly rural southern settlements:
Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. By the late 17th century, Virginia’s and Maryland’s economic and social structure rested on the great planters and the yeoman farmers. The planters of the tidewater region, supported by slave labor, held most of the political power and the best land. They built great houses, adopted an aristocratic way of life and kept in touch as best they could with the world of culture overseas. At the same time, yeoman farmers, who worked smaller tracts of land, sat in popular assemblies and found their way into political office. Their outspoken independence was a constant warning to the oligarchy of planters not to encroach too far upon the rights of free men. Charleston, South Carolina, became the leading port and trading center of the South. There the settlers quickly learned to combine agriculture and commerce, and the marketplace became a major source of prosperity. Dense forests also brought revenue: lumber, tar and resin from the longleaf pine provided some of the best shipbuilding materials in the world. Not bound to a single crop as was Virginia, North and South Carolina also produced and exported rice and indigo, a blue dye obtained from native plants, which was used in coloring fabric. By 1750 more than 100,000 people lived in the two colonies of North and South Carolina.
In the southern-most colonies, as everywhere else, population growth in the back country had special significance. German immigrants and Scots-Irish, unwilling to live in the original tidewater settlements where English influence was strong, pushed inland. Those who could not secure fertile land along the coast, or who had exhausted the lands they held, found the hills farther west a bountiful refuge. Although their hardships were enormous, restless settlers kept coming, and by the 1730s they were pouring into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Soon the interior was dotted with farms. Living on the edge of the Indian country, frontier families built cabins, cleared tracts in the wilderness and cultivated maize and wheat. The men wore leather made from the skin of deer or sheep, known as buckskin; the women wore garments of cloth they spun at home. Their food consisted of venison, wild turkey and fish. They had their own amusements — great barbecues, dances, housewarmings for newly married couples, shooting matches and contests for making quilted blankets. Quilts remain an American tradition today.

SOCIETY, SCHOOLS AND CULTURE
A significant factor deterring the emergence of a powerful aristocratic or gentry class in the colonies was the fact that anyone in an established colony could choose to find a new home on the frontier. Thus, time after time, dominant tidewater figures were obliged, by the threat of a mass exodus to the frontier, to liberalize political policies, land-grant requirements and religious practices. This movement into the foothills was of tremendous import for the future of America. Of equal significance for the future were the foundations of American education and culture established during the colonial period. Harvard College was founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Near the end of the century, the College of William and Mary was established in Virginia. A few years later, the Collegiate School of Connecticut, later to become Yale College, was chartered. But even more noteworthy was the growth of a school system maintained by governmental authority. The Puritan emphasis on reading directly from the Scriptures underscored the importance of literacy. In 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the “ye olde deluder Satan” Act, requiring every town having more than 50 families to establish a grammar school (a Latin school to prepare students for college). Shortly thereafter, all the other New England colonies, except Rhode Island, followed its example.
The first immigrants in New England brought their own little libraries and continued to import books from London. And as early as the 1680s, Boston booksellers were doing a thriving business in works of classical literature, history, politics, philosophy, science, theology and belles-lettres. In 1639 the first printing press in the English colonies and the second in North America was installed at Harvard College. The first school in Pennsylvania was begun in 1683. It taught reading, writing and keeping of accounts.
Thereafter, in some fashion, every Quaker community provided for the elementary teaching of its children. More advanced training — in classical languages, history and literature — was offered at the Friends Public School, which still operates in Philadelphia as the William Penn Charter School. The school was free to the poor, but parents who could were required to pay tuition. In Philadelphia, numerous private schools with no religious affiliation taught languages, mathematics and natural science; there were also night schools for adults. Women were not entirely overlooked, but their educational opportunities were limited to training in activities that could be conducted in the home. Private teachers instructed the daughters of prosperous Philadelphians in French, music, dancing, painting, singing, grammar and sometimes even bookkeeping. In the 18th century, the intellectual and cultural development of Pennsylvania reflected, in large measure, the vigorous personalities of two men: James Logan and Benjamin Franklin. Logan was secretary of the colony, and it was in his fine library that young Franklin found the latest scientific works. In 1745 Logan

erected a building for his collection and bequeathed both building and books to the city. Franklin contributed even more to the intellectual activity of Philadelphia. He formed a debating club that became the embryo of the American Philosophical Society. His endeavors also led to the founding of a public academy that later developed into the University of Pennsylvania. He was a prime mover in the establishment of a subscription library, which he called “the mother of all North American subscription libraries.” In the Southern colonies, wealthy planters and merchants imported private tutors from Ireland or Scotland to teach their children. Others sent their children to school in England. Having these other opportunities, the upper classes in the Tidewater were not interested in supporting public education. In addition, the diffusion of farms and plantations made the formation of community schools difficult. There were a few endowed free schools in Virginia; the Syms School was founded in 1647 and the Eaton School emerged in 1659.
The desire for learning did not stop at the borders of established communities, however. On the frontier, the Scots-Irish, though living in primitive cabins, were firm devotees of scholarship, and they made great efforts to attract learned ministers to their settlements.
Literary production in the colonies was largely confined to New England. Here attention concentrated on religious subjects. Sermons were the most common products of the press. A famous Puritan minister, the Reverend Cotton Mather, wrote some 400 works. His masterpiece, Magnalia Christi Americana, presented the pageant of New England’s history. But the most popular single work of the day was the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth’s long poem, “The Day of Doom,” which described the last judgment in terrifying terms.
In 1704 Cambridge, Massachusetts, launched the colonies’ first successful newspaper. By 1745 there were 22 newspapers being published throughout the colonies. In New York, an important step in establishing the principle of freedom of the press took place with the case of Johann Peter Zenger, whose New York Weekly Journal begun in 1733, represented the opposition to the government. After two years of publication, the colonial governor could no longer tolerate Zenger’s satirical barbs, and had him thrown into prison on a charge of seditious libel. Zenger continued to edit his paper from jail during his nine-month trial, which excited intense interest throughout the colonies. Andrew Hamilton, the prominent lawyer who defended Zenger, argued that the charges printed by Zenger were true and hence not libelous. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Zenger went free. The prosperity of the towns, which prompted fears that the devil was luring society into pursuit of worldly gain, produced a religious reaction in the 1730s that came to be known as the Great Awakening. Its inspiration came from two sources: George Whitefield, a Wesleyan revivalist who arrived from England in 1739, and Jonathan Edwards, who originally served in the Congregational Church in
Northampton, Massachusetts.
Whitefield began a religious revival in Philadelphia and then moved on to New England. He enthralled audiences of up to 20,000 people at a time with histrionic displays, gestures and emotional oratory. Religious turmoil swept throughout New England and the middle colonies as ministers left established churches to preach the revival. Among those influenced by Whitefield was Edwards, and the Great Awakening reached its culmination in 1741 with his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Edwards did not engage in theatrics, but delivered his sermons in a quiet, thoughtful manner. He stressed that the established churches sought to deprive Christianity of its emotional content. His magnum opus, Of Freedom of Will (1754), attempted to reconcile Calvinism with the Enlightenment. The Great Awakening gave rise to evangelical denominations and the spirit of revivalism, which continue to play significant roles in American religious and cultural life. It weakened the status of the established clergy and provoked believers to rely on their own conscience. Perhaps most important, it led to the proliferation of sects and denominations, which in turn encouraged general acceptance of the principle of religious toleration.

EMERGENCE OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT
In all phases of colonial development, a striking feature was the lack of controlling influence by the English government. All colonies except Georgia emerged as companies of shareholders, or as feudal proprietorships stemming from charters granted by the Crown. The fact that the king had transferred his immediate sovereignty over the New World settlements to stock companies and proprietors did not, of course, mean that the colonists in America were necessarily free of outside control. Under the terms of the Virginia Company charter, for example, full governmental authority was vested in the company itself. Nevertheless, the crown expected that the company would be resident in England. Inhabitants of Virginia, then, would have no more voice in their government than if the king himself had retained absolute rule. For their part, the colonies had never thought of themselves as subservient. Rather, they considered themselves chiefly as commonwealths or states, much like England itself, having only a loose association with the authorities in London. In one way or another, exclusive rule from the outside withered away. The colonists — inheritors of the traditions of the Englishman’s long struggle for political liberty — incorporated concepts of freedom into Virginia’s first charter. It provided that English colonists were to exercise all liberties, franchises and immunities “as if they had been abiding and born within this our Realm of England.” They were, then, to enjoy the benefits of the Magna Carta and the common law. In 1618 the Virginia Company issued instructions to its appointed governor providing that free inhabitants of the plantations should elect representatives to join with the governor and an appointive council in passing ordinances for the welfare of the colony.
These measures proved to be some of the most far-reaching in the entire colonial period. From then on, it was generally accepted that the colonists had a right to participate in their own government. In most instances, the king, in making future grants, provided in the charter that the free men of the colony should have a voice in legislation affecting them. Thus, charters awarded to the Calverts in Maryland, William Penn in Pennsylvania, the proprietors in North and South Carolina and the proprietors in New Jersey specified that legislation should be enacted with “the consent of the freemen.”
In New England, for many years, there was even more complete self-government than in the other colonies. Aboard the Mayflower, the Pilgrims adopted an instrument for government called the “Mayflower Compact,” to “combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation…and by virtue hereof [to] enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices…as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony….”
Although there was no legal basis for the Pilgrims to establish a system of self-government, the action was not contested and, under the compact, the Plymouth settlers were able for many years to conduct their own affairs without outside interference.
A similar situation developed in the Massachusetts Bay Company, which had been given the right to govern itself. Thus, full authority rested in the hands of persons residing in the colony. At first, the dozen or so original members of the company who had come to America attempted to rule autocratically. But the other colonists soon demanded a voice in public affairs and indicated that refusal would lead to a mass migration.

Faced with this threat, the company members yielded, and control of the government passed to elected representatives. Subsequently, other New England colonies — such as Connecticut and Rhode Island — also succeeded in becoming self-governing simply by asserting that they were beyond any governmental authority, and then setting up their own political system modeled after that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. In only two cases was the self-government provision omitted. These were New York, which was granted to Charles II’s brother, the Duke of York (later to become King James II); and Georgia, which was granted to a group of “trustees.” In both instances the provisions for governance were short-lived, for the colonists demanded legislative representation so insistently that the authorities soon yielded. Eventually most colonies became royal colonies, but in the mid-17th century, the English were too distracted by the Civil War (1642-1649) and Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth and Protectorate to pursue an effective colonial policy. After the restoration of Charles II and the Stuart dynasty in 1660, England had more opportunity to attend to colonial administration. Even then, however, it was inefficient and lacked a coherent plan, and the colonies were left largely to their own devices. The remoteness afforded by a vast ocean also made control of the colonies difficult. Added to this was the character of life itself in early America. From countries limited in space and dotted with populous towns, the settlers had come to a land of seemingly unending reach. On such a continent, natural conditions promoted a tough individualism, as people became used to making their own decisions. Government penetrated the back country only slowly, and conditions of anarchy often prevailed on the frontier.
Yet, the assumption of self-government in the colonies did not go entirely unchallenged. In the 1670s, the Lords of Trade and Plantations, a royal committee established to enforce the mercantile system on the colonies, moved to annul the Massachusetts Bay charter, because the colony was resisting the government’s economic policy. James II in 1685 approved a proposal to create a Dominion of New England and place colonies south through New Jersey under its jurisdiction, thereby tightening the Crown’s control over the whole region. A royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, levied taxes by executive order, implemented a number of other harsh measures and jailed those who resisted.
When news of the Glorious Revolution (1688-1689) that deposed James II reached Boston, the population rebelled and imprisoned Andros. Under a new charter, Massachusetts and Plymouth were united for the first time in 1691 as the royal colony of Massachusetts Bay. The other colonies that had come under the Dominion of New England quickly reinstalled their previous governments.
The Glorious Revolution had other positive effects on the colonies. The Bill of Rights and Toleration Act of 1689 affirmed freedom of worship for Christians and enforced limits on the Crown. Equally important, John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government (1690) set forth a theory of government based not on divine right but on contract, and contended that the people, endowed with natural rights of life, liberty and property, had the right to rebel when governments violated these natural rights. Colonial politics in the early 18th century resembled English politics in the 17th. The Glorious Revolution affirmed the supremacy of Parliament, but colonial governors sought to exercise powers in the colonies that the king had lost in England. The colonial assemblies, aware of events in England, attempted to assert their “rights” and “liberties.” By the early 18th century, the colonial legislatures held two significant powers similar to those held by the English Parliament: the right to vote on taxes and expenditures, and the right to initiate legislation rather than merely act on proposals of the governor. The legislatures used these rights to check the power of royal governors and to pass other measures to expand their power and influence. The recurring clashes between governor and assembly worked
increasingly to awaken the colonists to the divergence between American and English interests. In many cases, the royal authorities did not understand the importance of what the colonial assemblies were doing and simply neglected them. However, these acts established precedents and principles and eventually became part of the “constitution” of the colonies.In this way, the colonial legislatures established the right of self- government. In time, the center of colonial administration shifted from London to the provincial capitals.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
France and Britain engaged in a succession of wars in Europe and the Caribbean at several intervals in the 18th century. Though Britain secured certain advantages from them — primarily in the sugar-rich islands of the Caribbean — the struggles were generally indecisive, and France remained in a powerful position in North America at the beginning of the Seven Years War in 1754.
By that time France had established a strong relationship with a number of Indian tribes in Canada and along the Great Lakes, taken possession of the Mississippi River and, by establishing a line of forts and trading posts, marked out a great crescent-shaped empire stretching from Quebec to New Orleans. Thus, the British were confined to the narrow belt east of the Appalachian Mountains. The French threatened not only the British Empire but the American colonists themselves, for in holding the Mississippi Valley, France could limit their westward expansion.
An armed clash took place in 1754 at Fort Duquesne, the site where Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is now located, between a band of French regulars and Virginia militiamen under the command of 22-year-old George Washington, a Virginia planter and surveyor.
In London, the Board of Trade attempted to deal with the conflict by calling a meeting of representatives from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the New England colonies. From June 19 to July 10, the Albany Congress, as it came to be known, met with the Iroquois at Albany, New York, in order to improve relations with them and secure their loyalty to the British. The delegates also declared a union of the American colonies “absolutely necessary for their preservation,” and adopted the Albany Plan of Union. Drafted by Benjamin Franklin, the plan provided that a president appointed by the king act with a grand council of delegates chosen by the assemblies, with each colony to be represented in proportion to its financial contributions to the general treasury. This organ would have charge of defense, Indian relations, and trade and settlement of the west, as well as having the power to levy taxes. But none of the colonies accepted Franklin’s plan, for none wished to surrender either the power of taxation or control over the development of the western lands to a central authority.
England’s superior strategic position and her competent leadership ultimately brought victory in the Seven Years’ War, only a modest portion of which was fought in the Western Hemisphere. In the Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, France relinquished all of Canada, the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley to the British. The dream of a French empire in North America was over. Having triumphed over France, Britain was now compelled to face a problem that it had hitherto neglected — the governance of its empire. It was essential that London organize its now vast possessions to facilitate defense, reconcile the divergent interests of different areas and peoples, and distribute more evenly the cost of imperial administration.
In North America alone, British territories had more than doubled. To the narrow strip along the Atlantic coast had been added the vast expanse of Canada and the territory between the Mississippi River and the Allegheny Mountains, an empire in itself. A population that had been predominantly Protestant and English now included French-speaking Catholics from Quebec, and large numbers of partly Christianized Indians. Defense and administration of the new territories, as well as of the old, would require huge sums of money and increased personnel. The old colonial system was obviously inadequate to these tasks.

SIDEBAR: THE WITCHES OF SALEM
In 1692 a group of adolescent girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, became subject to strange fits after hearing tales told by a West Indian slave. When they were questioned, they accused several women of being witches who were tormenting them. The townspeople were appalled but not surprised: belief in witchcraft was widespread throughout 17th-century America and Europe.
What happened next — although an isolated event in American history — provides a vivid window into the social and psychological world of Puritan New England. Town officials convened a court to hear the charges of witchcraft, and swiftly convicted and executed a tavernkeeper, Bridget Bishop. Within a month, five other women had been convicted and hanged.
Nevertheless, the hysteria grew, in large measure because the court permitted witnesses to testify that they had seen the accused as spirits or in visions. By its very nature, such “spectral evidence” was especially dangerous, because it could be neither verified nor subject to objective examination. By the fall of 1692, more than 20 victims, including several men, had been executed, and more than 100 others were in jail — among them some of the town’s most prominent citizens. But now the hysteria threatened to spread beyond Salem, and ministers throughout the colony called for an end to the trials. The governor of the colony agreed and dismissed the court. Those still in jail were later acquitted or given reprieves. The Salem witch trials have long fascinated Americans. On a psychological level, most historians agree that Salem Village in 1692 was seized by a kind of public hysteria, fueled by a genuine belief in the existence of witchcraft. They point out that, while some of the girls may have been acting, many responsible adults became caught up in the frenzy as well. But even more revealing is a closer analysis of the identities of the accused and the accusers. Salem Village, like much of colonial New England at that time, was undergoing an economic and political transition from a largely agrarian, Puritan-dominated community to a more commercial, secular society. Many of the accusers were representatives of a traditional way of life tied to farming and the church, whereas a number of the accused witches were members of the rising commercial class of small shopkeepers and tradesmen. Salem’s obscure struggle for social and political power between older traditional groups and a newer commercial class was one repeated in communities throughout American history . But it took a bizarre and deadly detour when its citizens were swept up by the conviction that the devil was loose in their homes.
The Salem witch trials also serve as a dramatic parable of the deadly consequences of making sensational, but false, charges. Indeed, a frequent term in political debate for making false accusations against a large number of people is “witch hunt.